It is 1973 in the San Fernando Valley and things could not be more exciting for fifteen-year-old child star Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) because he just met Alana (Alana Haim), the girl he is going to marry – never mind her being ten years his senior.  After some convincing, Alana entertains Gary with a date, and as the two eventually begin to mix romance and business, it is hard to tell if their paths and ambitions will continue together or lead them apart.  The only guarantee is that it will be a wild journey, no matter where it leads, in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest work: Licorice Pizza. 

Produced in association with Focus Features and released by MGM and United Artists, Anderson returns to the wild, almost lawlessness, of the 70’s where anything goes in this freewheeling, pseudo-romantic comedy.  It is not the first time that Anderson has played in this genre before – Punch Drunk Love (2002) and Phantom Thread (2017) come to mind – but this film finds the formalist auteur at his most tender.  Despite the esoteric title, it is probably his most accessible film to date and is overflowing with style and flourish that mark this as the work of a master filmmaker totally in control of his craft.  

Licorice Pizza quite literally starts off with a bomb as we are introduced to Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman – a frequent staple in many of Anderson’s previous works before the patriarch’s all-too-soon death – is at the center of the film for much of its meandering 133-minute runtime.  He brings and incredible natural energy in his impressive debut role as a teenager who is both fully sure of himself while aimlessly trying to find his way in life.  He is confident, though it never crosses over into true arrogance so when the films finds him making some questionable choices, we still are rooting for everything to work out for the boy. 

Opposite him is Alana Haim, also in her debut role though no stranger to the camera as a member of the pop-rock band “Haim” with her sisters of which Anderson has directed a number of music videos for.  Like Hoffman, she is magnetic on screen and her arc is incredibly interesting as she grows out of her shell and begins to recognize her own desires and ambitions and take life head-on.  Anderson has almost always had interesting female roles in his films, especially as of late, but Alana is probably one of his most interesting characters as she starts off as pretty much a blank canvas and we witness her coming of age – albeit delayed – play out over the narrative.  Anderson wrote Alana with so much agency in shaping her own story and while Licorice Pizza opens as Gary’s story, the film is a constant tug of war between the two and the argument can be made that it ends as Alana’s story. 

Despite the very natural performances and the hangout tone of many of the scenes, the wit is far too layered to be improvised on set nor do we get the impression that the camera was left to run so that it captures something “real” as so often is the case when directors cast non-actors in their films.  Licorice Pizza is just as nuanced and structured as of Anderson’s impressive masterworks.  The difference here is that the shape and structure is not being brought to the forefront as it has in his previous works.  The stakes here could not be lower – high school puppy love – which allows Anderson plenty of time to steep and simmer the plot without the audience being totally preoccupied with the grandiosity of the characters, settings, or costumes that quickly capture the attention in any of his previous films.  It is as if he is hitting a big reset button on the expectations of what a Paul Thomas Anderson film is in the superfluous sense, while still maintaining the smaller, more intimate, character moments that make his films exceptional. 

It is clear that there is not a single thing in frame that was not placed there deliberately, but the winding nature of the narrative can be off-putting to those still invested after clearing the hurdle of the character’s age difference.  The first two-thirds play out rather nonchalantly as Gary and Alana flirt back and forth, and it follows the general mapping of a standard romantic comedy from the meet cute to eventual falling out, with quite a few detours along the way. 

One such detour which helps lead into the third act is Gary as a budding entrepreneur selling water beds eventually meeting Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper), a tightly wound, powder keg of an individual whose presence looms large and ominously over the final section of the film made darker by the oil crisis plaguing the valley.  Thankfully, Cooper is in little more than a glorified cameo role here as he is the least interesting of the long list of other bit players including Christine Ebersole, Sean Penn, and Harriet Sansom Harris to name a few of the eccentric characters that fill out this off-kilter world.  His biggest asset to the film is allowing for an absolutely thrilling sequence involving a runaway truck, scenes oddly enough that he is not even present for. 

The main force behind the third act, as mentioned, is Alana’s own growth.  As she falls into place at the campaign office of Joel Wachs (Benny Safdie), she uses what she learned as a waterbed salesman and focuses that interest on becoming a politician and making a difference while Gary is too preoccupied with pinball machines to realize the world around him.  The way this act plays out helps open the world up beyond Gary’s bubble, but it also shows the complicated and complex dynamic shared between the two – they need each other, even if not for romantic means, they rely on each other because in a way they need each other to continue on their own goals.  They are both likeable enough that this precarious arrangement is seen more as symbiotic than parasitic which is the key to the success of Licorice Pizza. 

Fans of Anderson will find plenty to enjoy in his latest effort.  It finds him much more free-wheeling like in Inherent Vice (2014), but with a more straightforward plot even if it can seem at times to be a series of loosely connected moments.  The narrative does not follow a straight line as the atmosphere simmers away without ever boiling over like in There Will be Blood (2007).  Licorice Pizza is Anderson at his most gentle.  Similar to the more restrained version of Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood (2019), the film is a singular vision from Anderson, but it finds the director working in a way that is familiar enough to be comforting but different enough to be exciting.  It marks a very specific moment in his filmography – one that could not be achieved any earlier than now as it is the perfect culmination of everything that has come before it.