LICORICE PIZZA

 
I'm confused by this film and its reception. People I know and respect are raving about it, including critics that I suspect if it had been made by a lesser known non-"white" LGBTQ+ etc. director they would have picked apart. And there are facets of the film and its production that impress, but there's also  a lot that seems inconsistent and just baffling to me.

The two leads are new to film and fresh and compellingly un-star cliched. But their age difference would be obviously a bigger deal if their genders were reversed. Some think that's partly what makes the film unique and important while noting that Alana Haim's character is immature for her age (which she declares most often is 25 but could be older or younger) and Cooper Hoffman's character preternaturally mature for what is definitely supposed to be 15.

The scenes with the husband of two different Japanese wives, which Asian activists have declared racist, have been defended on the grounds that it's their white husband who is being ridiculed for comic effect, but I didn't laugh I cringed. And though this all may seem petty to Paul Thomas Anderson fans, I've long been bothered by bits in movies about the Jewish male standing out and open to ridicule for being circumcised in a group shower scene or locker room etc. I was born in a hospital in Orange New Jersey in 1942 and was automatically circumcised as were most non-Jewish boys at the time, so it never was a thing when I was in the military or in my Catholic high school football team locker room. So that bit always seems not only a lazy dramatic or comic device but just plain wrong (and the movie is set in the mid-1970s, before the anti-circumcision movement began).

There are a slew of star cameos in the film, most of which are fun (e.g. Sean Penn's scenes) and Bradley Cooper's more-than-a-cameo, over-the-top satirical portrayal of Jon Peters assholeness exemplifies mine and I'd guess a lot of others from the movie business of that period's feelings about him. But for me the pieces didn't come together to be much more than a director/writer's highlight reel, with some brilliant scenes and some the-opposite-of-brilliant ones.