Licorice Pizza - Film Review
When you watch the trailer of Licorice Pizza, you’re promised a whimsical love story between two teenagers, interspersed with the trials and tribulations of growing up, set to a cracking 70s soundtrack. I only had to watch the trailer once and I was sold, believing this was a quirky coming-of-age movie like no other. Watching it in the cinema, I was met with the reality of a disappointing, disjointed, and (I have to say it) boring piece – a poor film, marketed exceptionally well.
Set in 70s American suburbia, the film begins with a shot of
a high-school corridor as the students queue up for their annual photographs.
The premise is simple: boy meets girl, only you have to look a little further
than that. The Birmingham What’s On guide states that it ‘tells the
story of a 15-year-old child actor and his interaction with a woman who’s old
enough to be his big sister’.[1]
But wait a second – Alana Kaine is not just big-sister-age, she’s twenty-five,
a whole decade older than Gary Valentine, the schoolboy who immediately asks
her on a date. Aside from the obvious point that this relationship would be
deemed predatory if the genders were switched, the coupling creates
uncomfortable scenarios that cast shadows primarily on Alana’s character, an
otherwise worthy heroine.
The two leads are played by Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim,
part of the musical trio (the other two also appear in the movie as her
sisters). This film has a serious problem with exploiting celebrity value, but
more on that later. For now it should be noted that the acting of the two leads
is exceptional; they are refreshingly ordinary, unexpectedly hilarious, and
consistently engaging. It’s just a shame they are the co-stars of a bad film.
The main issue I have is relating to structure. The core
storyline (if Alana were only a few years younger) is gold, documenting the
hapless ambition of two youngsters trying to overcome the hopelessness of
suburbia. But alongside this thread, we are constantly being introduced to
extra characters and plots that we have no reason to care about. And these
storylines come thick and fast, so that you’re never quite sure when the film
will finally pack up and move to a close. I found myself looking at my watch
only 90 minutes in, despite my ability to sit through four-hour-long
Shakespeare productions quite happily.
Take, for example, the cameo from Bradley Cooper, which is
so just-for-the-sake-of-it that it hurts. He is portraying Jon Peters, a
real-life film producer and Barbra Streisand’s former partner, who is being
sold a waterbed by Gary and Alana. His bizarrely threatening interaction with
the couple could have been taken straight out of his role as Pat in the Silver
Linings Playbook, or Phil in the Hangover, which is to say that it
is completely unoriginal. The
Independent described him as ‘scene-stealing’, which simply exposes the
gimmick of chucking a famous actor into the movie without adequately explaining
why on earth he’s there.
Another cameo comes from Sean Penn, portraying a sleazy director
that Alana auditions for, before she accompanies him to a swanky restaurant
(seemingly to make Gary jealous). This leads to a beyond-bizarre scene where a
25-year-old is cosying up to a 60-year-old to make an impact on her 15-year-old
crush, and the whole thing undermines the dignity of her role. Later, Sean
Penn’s character gathers the whole restaurant to a soccer pitch where he
recreates one of his famous film scenes on a motorbike. Why? I have no idea.
While some could argue that these storylines serve to
represent nostalgia for the glory days of music and film, they felt more
aggressively pretentious than quietly compelling. There was one brief section
that I was almost convinced by, where Alana volunteers for a young political
candidate who has a heart-rending secret. Yet, as this was introduced around
twenty minutes before the end of the film, I was simply too tired at that point
to care about this new character. All of this material took away from the
moments that the film handled best: Gary and Alana sprinting around the town
and going on crazy entrepreneurial adventures.
As is evident from the trailer, which narrates the film
almost literally using David Bowie’s track ‘Life on Mars’, this movie relies on
its soundtrack. 70s hits appear as if from nowhere and attempt to create the
kind of barefoot indie-road-trip vibe that the film fails to deliver. A jazzy
piano backing tells us that we should find Gary and Alana’s first date
romantic, even as the very characters themselves are cringing. The 2016 flop The
Suicide Squad comes to mind, where the lack of interesting characterisation
is masked by blaring a pop hit during any important moment.
Tragically, this film lets down its leading lady countless
times. So many things about Alana, from her disparate age to her tendency to
flirt with any male character that she comes across, undermine her stellar
performance. Some of my favourite moments in the film were those that focussed
on her and her alone: such as the opening shot of her sauntering through the
high school in a tennis skirt, and the later sequence where she struts all the
way home in a purple bikini. A character with such potential deserves to be
rescued from this substandard film.
The
Independent aptly described Licorice Pizza as Director Paul
Thomas Anderson’s ‘self-aggrandizing fantasy’, and I would emphasise that this
is a specifically male fantasy, where the female lead is embarrassingly
manipulated. As the movie racks up 5* reviews, I’m left feeling alienated,
which I would owe to the disparity between what people want the film to be, and
what it actually is. To a film-fanatic millennial, it’s a nostalgic look at
American pop culture. To me, it’s a painfully offensive and yet painfully
boring indulgence.
Rating: 3/10
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