The Best Film of 2021: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Electrifying ‘Licorice Pizza’

Licorice Pizza, the latest from the great filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, begins with a burst of spontaneity; 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is combing his hair in the boys’ bathroom for school picture day, a group of boys next to him doing the same. All of a sudden, someone pulls a prank in one of the stalls; the toilet explodes, the door blows off its hinges, and the boys all rush out of the room while laughing. It’s a brief and insignificant moment, but it’s that spontaneity that comes to be the key to Licorice Pizza at its core—the sense that anything could happen at any moment at any time. From there, Nina Simone’s “July Tree” takes over the soundtrack as we’re properly launched into the film; Anderson’s camera tracks in an unbroken shot following twenty-something Alana Kane (Alana Haim), an assistant for the photography

company, through the picture line. Gary approaches her and begins chatting her up with an undeniable confidence and bravado, and their back-and-forth dynamic instantly recalls the rapid-fire rapport of classic screwball comedies.

And that dynamic is the center of Licorice Pizza’s plot. Gary and Alana begin spending all their time together, running all over the San Fernando Valley of the 1970s, getting themselves involved in various kinds of schemes and escapades and business ventures, occasionally drifting apart but always finding their way back to each other. It’s not really a romance (and it shouldn’t be; that’d be inappropriate given the age difference between the two, and Anderson knows better than to cross any lines), but there’s an irrefutable platonic bond and connection between them. Gary is a B-list teen actor who spends more time as a budding entrepreneur, starting up various small businesses with the help of his mom—and eventually Alana. His acting glory days are behind him, as shown in a scene where he bombs his audition for a commercial. He uses his swagger as a way to try to appear like an adult, but he’s ultimately still an immature teenager who laughs at dumb jokes and believes he can score with a woman several years his senior. Alana is an aimless adult caught in a state of stasis and arrested development, with no idea what to do or where to go in her life; she’s stuck in unsatisfying jobs, doesn’t have much of a career path, and still lives with her two sisters and their parents.

Both are growing up sideways, and they find company in each other as a result. With these two characters—essentially two sides of the same coin—the film explores the feeling of having one’s whole life ahead of them, but not knowing how to approach it or how to take that next crucial step forward. Their push-pull relationship is among the most complicated, three-dimensional character work in any recent film. Why exactly does Alana keep getting pulled into Gary’s orbit, even though it’s against her better judgment? Anderson doesn’t hold our hands with easy answers, and instead presents the relationship as something flawed and messy and multifaceted—just like real life.

Anderson’s casting of two inexperienced newcomers in the lead roles is a bold choice, and yet one that proves to be the right choice. Alana Haim is known as one-third of the pop band HAIM with her two sisters (who also appear in the film as Alana’s sisters, and their real-life parents also play their parents); Anderson has worked with HAIM as director of several of their music videos, but this is Haim’s feature film debut. Cooper Hoffman is the son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose frequent collaborations with Anderson made for one of the great director-actor combinations (they worked together on The Master, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and Hard Eight).

Anderson has always had an impeccable eye for casting, often finding the right talent in unexpected places, whether it’s the against-type casting of Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love or Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights or Tom Cruise in Magnolia, or the casting of then-unknown Vicky Krieps in Phantom Thread. All of these casting choices have always yielded excellent results, and Haim and Hoffman are no exception. Both actors do stunning work for first-timers, and embody their characters to the degree where it’s impossible to imagine anyone else having played them. But it’s Haim in particular who truly excels; the Alana character proves to be the

core of Licorice Pizza, and the film is practically built around her expressive face and reactions, and her pitch-perfect line deliveries. There’s a moment late in the film during a pivotal scene where Anderson simply holds the camera still on a mirror reflecting Haim’s face for an extended time, and in the context of the scene, entire paragraphs’ worth are communicated just by her expressions. It’s truly star-making work, and one of the greatest breakout performances in recent memory.

And that’s not even to mention the absurd amount of talent in the supporting cast. Licorice Pizza’s free-flowing structure, bouncing from one vignette to the next, allows for a variety of cameos and character actors to drop in shortly and steal their scenes. One stretch midway through the film involves Gary and Alana, having partnered on a waterbed company, delivering a waterbed to the home of real-life lunatic Hollywood producer Jon Peters, who’s played by Bradley Cooper in a hilariously unhinged cameo. His scenes provide some of the film’s biggest laughs, but also provide an unpredictable tension that almost recalls the iconic sequence late in Boogie Nights with Alfred Molina’s off-the-rails drug dealer—a real sense that things could take a turn at any moment. There’s also a riotously funny scene with character actor Harriet Sansom Ellis (who also worked with Anderson in Phantom Thread) as an intense casting agent who Alana meets with when trying to break into acting. Benny Safdie (co-director of Uncut Gems and Good Time) shows up as real-life mayoral candidate Joel Wachs, who employs Alana to assist him on the campaign trail. Blues singer Tom Waits drops in briefly, and even Sean Penn is there as a washed-up Hollywood actor named Jack Holden whom Alana auditions opposite for a role. Similarly to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Licorice Pizza weaves in and out between fiction and reality (in addition to the real-life figures, the 1970s oil embargo hangs over the background of the movie), with a simultaneous affection and contempt for classic Hollywood. There’s certainly a warmth and nostalgia to how Anderson depicts this milieu, but he also touches on the sleaziness of figures like Peters and Holden, and how the limiting options of the time for a woman like Alana affects her ability to pursue what she wants. These harsh but truthful doses of reality help craft an all the more accurate and all-encompassing portrait of the period, a reminder that there’s more to the past than what’s in the frame of rose-colored glasses.

But above all, what makes Licorice Pizza so rewarding is that Anderson includes these complexities underneath the surface, but never distracts from how inviting and amiable and energetic the film is. Anderson’s craft is top-notch; the 1970s setting is beautifully realized, with the shag carpeting and bell bottoms and vintage cars and period-accurate soundtrack cues all helping to create an authentically lived-in and immersive atmosphere. The influences of ‘70s filmmakers like Robert Altman and Hal Ashby have always been in the DNA of Anderson’s films, but they’ve never been more apparent than they are here, frequently bringing to mind the shaggy looseness and sprawling ensembles of Altman’s The Long Goodbye and Nashville, respectively. Anderson has explored this Los Angeles setting many times before, whether in Boogie Nights or Inherent Vice or Magnolia or Punch-Drunk Love. But he’s never approached it from this angle, nor has he made a film this light and breezy and consistently funny. Despite the meandering nature of the film, it’s never anything less than thrilling to watch as it drifts through this sunny slice of life.

The film’s seemingly nonsensical title refers to a long-gone chain of record stores in Southern California in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and although there’s no actual mention of a Licorice Pizza store in the movie, it calls to mind how the experience of watching this film is much like playing a great album. It jumps episodically from one vignette to the next, and maybe not every individual element lands (such as a running joke with John Michael Higgins as a cartoonishly racist Japanese restaurant owner; it’s clear that the joke is pointed at the Higgins character and the ignorant attitudes of the time, but the scenes feel out of place regardless). But like a great record, it all coalesces into a full and complete and rewarding experience, and when it’s all over, it’ll be hard to resist the urge to drop the needle on it again. And again. And again. Few films in recent memory have opened themselves up to repeat viewings like this one (I’ve already seen it twice); it’s so easy to get lost in all the detours and digressions, the constant stream of memorable scenes, the tangibility of the period details, etc. What drives Licorice Pizza from beginning to end is its constant propulsive momentum, and the sense that it’s barreling forward just like its main characters. Alana and Gary are constantly running in the film—with each other, towards each other, away from each other. And the film matches that forward movement at every turn. Arguably the film’s most memorable scene involves maneuvering a truck with no gas while it careens down a hill, and it’s hard not to think that it’s a little mini-capsule of the film overall—rolling along with a freewheeling energy and a fluid effortlessness. Seeing it on a gorgeous 70mm film print, I felt completely transported to the world that Anderson presents; back to a time that I was never alive for, but felt like I had known all my life, as if I’d been a part of this world since before the film even started rolling. And as soon as the credits rolled, I wanted to dive right back in again. What a gift to have a film like this.