Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

No one ever mentions licorice or pizza in Licorice Pizza. The phrase comes from a Southern California record store chain sold to Northern California chain Record Bar in 1985, which was sold a year later to Musicland, then the nation’s largest record retailer, which was rebranded as Sam Goody a year after that. This makes “Licorice Pizza” a local reference of nostalgia specific to Southern Californians, who these days are about the only people in the country to get the subtle in-joke of the title. The rest of us have to settle for explanations like this one.

No one even spends any time in a record store in this movie, which writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson presents as a relatively casual hang in the San Fernando Valley of yore. The same could be said of most of his films, except that, until now, his films tended to feature pretty dramatic turns of events.

Don’t go expecting any such thing here. Licorice Pizza is great on most fronts, with Anderson’s characteristically stellar direction, memorably detailed performances, and knowingly purposeful cinematography and editing. Which is to say, I loved everything about this movie, except for the story itself, which I didn’t dislike—it was just, fine. A bit slight, to be honest. This is clearly Anderson’s intent, and I can’t quite decide how I feel about that decision.

Inevitably, a director whose work I adore winds up disappointing me, given enough time. Such was finally the case with Paul Thomas Anderson only with the mystifying 2015 film Inherent Vice, which he then more than made up for with the gorgeous and nuanced Phantom Thread in 2018. Either way, those movies were big swings, as his films tend to be, albeit in wildly different ways. And if there is anything Licorice Pizza is not, it’s a big swing. And still, it features no less attention to detail. Some of the scenes I found most memorable would have been throwaway scenes in any other director’s movie, but here we get closeups incredibly well shot, where we see the subtlest movements of every part of a person’s face.

The one legitimately odd thing about this movie is that it’s functionally a love story between a 15-year-old boy and a 25-year-old woman. Should more people be talking about this? What if he had chosen to swap the genders of those characters? It would absolutely come across as creepy and people would be talking about it. It could be argued, I suppose, that it makes a difference having the woman as the older one, as it changes the power dynamic in a patriarchal society. Which one of them really has more functional power here? Alana has yet to learn true responsibility and lives with her parents in a state of arrested development; Gary is a successful child actor who uses his earnings to start new businesses, from waterbeds to pinball machines.

Gary, incidentally, is played by 17-year-old Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, in his very first role. There is a sweet poetry to this casting, given the elder Hoffman appeared in five of Anderson’s films. Alana, on the other hand, is played by 28-year-old Alana Haim (or at least, that’s how old she was during principal photography), also in her feature film debut. Alana is one of three sisters who make up the L.A.-based pop rock band Haim, for which Anderson has directed several music videos, subsequently writing this lead part for Alana.

It should be noted that there is no sex in this movie, so we don’t see Gary and Alana consummate their relationship, although it’s clear from the start that Gary would love for that to happen. For most of the story, such as it is, Alana reacts to Gary’s crush with amused derision, telling him they can be friends but not romantic. Spoiler alert! The do eventually kiss, and I have to admit that part, singular and brief as it is in the film, does squick me out a bit. The clear implication seems to be that when it comes to romance, it may not be guaranteed, but the potential is there.

Does Anderson want us to be thinking about this, I wonder? Fifty years ago, society at large didn’t bat much of an eye to relationships like this, which makes this movie a reflection of the era. That’s not a justification, but a reality of the time, and Licorice Pizza makes no clear moral judgment on the matter, evidently allowing us to make one for ourselves. That said, it also has no clear expectation of such judgments on the part of the audience, instead adopting a tone that is vaguely wistful, perhaps a look back with fondness in spite of it being a bit problematic.

In any case, the way this film ends is less a celebration of where these two find themselves than it is an observation of a specific place and point in time. This story is not big on closure, so much as narrative flourishes—such as Sean Penn as a casting agent who takes a shining to Alana; Tom Waits as his old friend, or Bradley Cooper as a pompous actor. The latter plays a pivotal part in a uniquely exciting sequence in which a rented truck runs out of gas and has to be coasted down a hill.

The young age gap aside, Licorice Pizza feels like a movie that might age well. I quite enjoyed the viewing experience of it, even as it lacked the clearer substance of Anderson’s previous films. I’m just not as eager to re-watch it as I have been so many of his others. I certainly wouldn’t say anyone needs to rush out to see this in theaters. It’s too casual a hang, and seems almost tailor made for sitting with it in your living room once it becomes available there, which will no doubt be soon enough.

*They’d be flirting with disaster if they weren’t in such capable hands.*

Overall: B+