“Are these lines or is this real?”

I often speak about films that don’t “commit” in some way to what they are or are trying to be. They fear the kickback from an audience that doesn’t understand them or a studio that thinks they’re too intense. In limiting themselves in this way they end up flat, safe, meaningless, and forgettable. For me, that’s exactly where the late 2021 release, Licorice Pizza, has landed.

This is a film that hinges entirely on three things, and three things alone. The absolutely stellar performances of its leads, the controversy behind its plot, and nostalgia for the 1970’s. Beyond that, there’s little to no substance and it does next to nothing with the two of those things that actually matter.

Managing to create much of the visual style and feeling of 1970’s LA on screen, the plot meanders through several different settings that will no doubt bring familiar viewers back to their earlier days and create a warm fuzzy feeling inside them, but it never quite commits to fully selling the decade in order to not dissuade more modern audiences.

Alana Haim [Alana] and Cooper Hoffman [Gary] are absolutely stellar on screen and work together in a way that is both believable and charming. The problem is that nearly nothing is done with them. They banter and cat back and forth all film about their budding, inappropriate relationship, but, by the end, it simply doesn’t matter. The film never leans into it enough to make the audience look past the fact that she’s 25 [28?] and he’s 15. The story simply is not strong enough, meaningful enough, or rebellious enough to bring it past this simple and pointless contrivance. At the end of the day, Licorice Pizza is just Romeo and Juliet with several too many characters that don’t matter and the unwelcome addition that you don't care about the relationship because you know next to nothing about Juliet by the end… and also [spoilers] everything wraps up tidy and perfect so why does it matter anyway? It’s really too bad because Alana and Cooper could have pulled off a much riskier and powerful script.

For those that are concerned, this is not a movie that supports pedophilia. Stop it. The problem is, however, that if the genders are flipped, this movie never gets made. An older male character rebuffing but finally giving in to a younger female character in the 1970’s? With the caliber of the plot in this film, people would riot about the conspiratorial podophilic elite that run Hollywood. There’s simply not enough substance behind the story and if that singular plot point is taken out of Licorice, the entire thing falls apart and immediately becomes [more] uninteresting.

From a production standpoint, Licorice is very well made and visually engaging. I could have done with more evocative or period themed cinematography, but the production as a whole was very tight and well conceived. Sound editing and lighting are on par with anything else out there and the soundtrack was well placed and thought-out. All of the characters in the film are interesting [if equally meaningless] and it’s really just too bad it didn’t lean into any one lane harder to make for a lasting experience.

From a cold open that misses the perfect placement of its title card by just a single scene and multiple false endings that too tidily wrap up a world you never quite care about, Licorice Pizza is the perfect example of a film that needed to “pick a lane” and commit to something truly risky and bold instead of just hiding behind an obviously tough to swallow mask. Somehow it will simultaneously leave you wanting more from all that it could have been and free from almost all that it was.

“You’re not cool, and your breath smells”