Best Pictures #82: 2021 (94th) Academy Award Best Picture Nominee: Licorice Pizza

by A.J 

Best Pictures #82: 2021 (94th) Academy Award Best Picture Nominee

Licorice Pizza

No matter the genre or subject matter, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, turns in films that are interesting, creative, challenging, and fascinating. They are the kind of movies that I hope to see every time I go to the theater or push play on a movie at home but are so rare that they feel like a treat. So much of Anderson’s Licorice Pizza feels like a living memory. Even as the sights and situations move from unlikely to bizarre, and back again, the story maintains believability because it stays grounded in its wonderfully charming main characters. Watching Licorice Pizza isn’t like watching someone else’s memory, it is being completely engrossed in the time and place and excitement the characters experience. 

Not unlike many films of the era in which Licorice Pizza is set, the early 1970’s, there is no discernible plot, but that is not to say it has no story or is aimless. What Licorice Pizza has instead of a traditional plot is great, charming leads with performances to match from Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman. Hoffman, son of the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, gives the most charismatic performance I’ve seen in years, matched only by co-star Alana Haim’s genuine movie star performance. Each does that rare and special movie magic trick of making their characters feel like real people. Their natural charisma, whether on screen together or separately, is the driving force and key to the whole movie. We follow these young people from experience to experience, scheme to scheme, as they navigate their way through 1973 Los Angeles. 

Hoffman plays Gary, a 15 year old actor who senses that his days as a child star are behind him and sets about on a series of business schemes (selling waterbeds, opening a pinball arcade). Haim plays Alana, a 25 year old working odd jobs who then gets caught up in Gary’s schemes. It is obvious that Gary has an unrequited crush on Alana, but his main appeal to her is as an unlikely mentor. It’s unlikely that Alana would’ve wanted to become an actress or become involved in a local L.A. political campaign if she had not met Gary first. After his first scene it is easy to see why other characters gravitate to him, go along with his plans and schemes, and why all the adults treat him like an old friend. Alana is more serious in her aspirations, though no less of a wanderer. She easily avoids the pitfalls of this kind of character: she’s never pretentious though she wants to do something important, never whiny though she doesn’t know what she wants. She is recognizable and relatable. We don’t know where she or Gary are going but we’re rooting for them and their futures. Neither Cooper Hoffman nor Alana Haim received Oscar nominations, yet they are entirely deserving of any and all praise and recognition for their performances.

Licorice Pizza is episodic but never feels disjointed or aimless. The episodes that stand out are the ones that involve Gary and Alana encountering the worst examples of adult males. From John Michael Higgins as the owner of Japanese restaurant who speaks English to his Japanese wife in a horribly racist accent (because he does not know Japanese) to Sean Penn as Jack Holden (a Williams Holden surrogate) who recreates a famous movie stunt and puts Alana in real danger to Bradley Cooper as real life hairdresser turned movie producer and husband of Barbara Streisand, Jon Peters. Cooper’s brief scenes are the most memorable and over the top sequence in the movie, simultaneously strange, hilarious, and frightening. Cooper is only so funny because he plays it so seriously; he wasn’t nominated by the Academy but Bradley Cooper deserves special recognition for his wild performance.

I suppose Licorice Pizza could be described as a “vibe” or “hangout” movie, meaning that if you like the vibe, if you want to just hangout with the characters no matter what happens, then you will enjoy the movie; if not, then you won’t. Recent examples of this kind of movie are the musical In the Heights and Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Of course this is not a new genre or approach. Two films Licorice Pizza reminded me of right away were Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and George Lucas’s American Graffiti. These films, also light on plot, heavy on atmosphere, characters, and a sense of time and place are more than just the events that happen between the opening and closing credits. Youthful energy is recreated and released out to the audience. You experience what it is like to be these people at this time in this place searching for the next step, running blissfully in the glowing sunlight. 

Nominees: Sara Murphy, Adam Somner, Paul Thomas Anderson, producers

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn

Release Date: November 26th, 2021

Production Companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Focus Features, Bron Creative, Ghoulardi Film Company

Distributor: United Artists Releasing/Universal Pictures

Total Nominations: 3, including Best Picture

Win(s): N/A

Other Nominations: Director-Paul Thomas Anderson; Original Screenplay-Paul Thomas Anderson