Licorice Pizza

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's paean to the 1970s California teenager fidgets around so much--what with stop-and-start episodes that don't really go anywhere in particular but, instead, "build momentum" as they say--some viewers may start wondering around the one-hour mark what the movie is going to be about. Cooper Hoffman (the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a real find as a 15-year-old go-getter; rushing around on pure youthful adrenaline, he's a sweet kid who hustles himself first before delivering product, parlaying his schemes into reality. Before she knows it, Alana Haim's "older woman", a kids' photographer in her twenties, is meeting this kid for a soda. She's dazzled by his self-assurance but keeps her awe somewhat in check. This seems an unlikely match--what 20-year-old girl hangs around with a teenage boy?--but with Anderson guiding us through their many assorted misadventures, it's easy to buy into this relationship. "Licorice Pizza" is slight, but admirers of Anderson's style will likely be captivated and won't care. Initially, the dialogue between Hoffman and Haim is unreal (she's at his school for Picture Day); however, once Hoffman demonstrates to her that he's a doer--a teenage actor, an entrepreneur, a businessman--she becomes his partner, his driver...but not his girlfriend! It's an amusingly simple movie with complicated emotions running all the way through it. I don't feel Anderson brought the film to a satisfactory close (the editing seems a little lax and the staging is disappointing), but these kids are quite extraordinary to watch and the eclectic supporting cast is full of interesting oddballs. *** from ****

Alana Haim admits to being 25, and may be 28. She has no idea what she wants to do. Cooper Hoffman is 15, a successful child actor, a budding entrepreneur -- waterbeds and newly decriminalized pinball machines -- and wants her. Paul Thomas Anderson's latest movie is set, like Tarrantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, in Los Angeles some time in the 1960s or 1970s -- the scripts make Leave It To Beaver contemporaneous with the Oil Crisis. Anderson takes a viewpoint that is more realistic, more sympathetic, and at the same time, more cynical. His camera looks at its subjects like 1970s cameras did; people are not flattered by the 1970s clothes they wear, and the visible architecture is tired and ugly. And no one approves of the relationship between the leads, not even Miss Haim. The movie is filled out with contemporary individuals, some appearing under their real names -- John C. Reilly appears as Fred Gwynne in Munsters make-up, and Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters -- while others show up under pseudonyms -- Christine Ebersole is Lucy Doolittle, clearly a drunken, foul-mouthed Lucille Ball hyping a thinly disguised YOURS, MINE, AND OURS. As for the story, well, it's like most of Anderson's movies, a tale about not particularly likeable people trying to be happy in a world that doesn't approve of anything. I suppose it reflects reality, in that it's thoroughly muddled, but I prefer a bit more clarity in my stories.

Unlikeable characters, a chaotic plot, pointless cameos and repetitive running scenes add up to a frenetic yet tedious movie that I really wish had lasted at least 30 minutes less.

This is the worst movie I have seen in a long time - no point , no connection to any character, way too long , boring and a waste of time. No one is concerned with a 25 year old woman hanging out with a 15 year old ? I seriously could not wait for it to end .