Who would have guessed it; Paul Thomas Anderson has made the best romantic comedy in years but then, this being a Paul Thomas Anderson film, where's the surprise. Perhaps it's in the setting, (LA in the seventies, a world of film, television and waterbeds), if not in the treatment which is as idiosyncratic as ever. Firstly, take the ages of the young lovers; he's 15 and she's 25 and it's an on-again-off-again romance that's never really a romance but a friendship as sweet as any in the movies. This is Anderson's most accessible film as well as the funniest but again, this being a Paul Thomas Anderson film, it's not without its dark side but that move in and out of darkness is flawlessly done.
Of course, how much of this is autobiographical I haven't the faintest idea. Let's just say it's about a boy coming of age in California in the 1970's where Anderson himself was born in 1970, too young to be the film's hero but old enough to remember the movie brats of whom Anderson is perhaps the youngest and possibly the most talented but unlike Tarantino, Anderson doesn't people his film with 'real-life' cameos, (witht the exception of Jon Peters, one-time 'Mr. Barbra Streisand'), but some nicely disguised portraits like Jack Holden, (think William, with a dash of Steven McQueen; a terrific Sean Penn) and Lucy Doollittle, (think 'Ricardo',circa "Yours, Mine and Ours").
But then all of this is just window dressing, if brilliant window dressing, to the movie's main love story that is carried along by two truly wonderful performances from Cooper Hoffman, (son of Philip Semour with both the looks and talent of his dad), and newcomer Alana Haim. They are unknown now but their futures are assured; these are two of the best performances of 2021 though Bradley Cooper does his best to upstage them as Peters.
Yes, Anderson may fill his film with crowd-pleasing cameos, (Harriet Sansom Harris is another gem), but he saves the best moments for Hoffman and Haim; a silent phone call that speaks volumes, an initial meeting in high school grounds that is one of the sweetest getting-to-know-you moments in movies, running towards each other during various stages of their relationship as if fate really had decreed that these two people should be together.
In its way, this is Anderson's love letter to the movies, the ones we pay our money to see in the multiplexes, but it's equally Anderson having the time of his life and passing it on. "Licorice Pizza" is easily the sweetest movie of the year and almost certainly the best.
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