Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021)

[therewillbeblus]

Also love the one where she renegotiates Frasier's contract with the station manager Tom.

Yes, that's a great one too! She takes everything to 11 in the best ways

[Noiretirc]

I'm 4 years late to this party.

My first (very broadbrush) reactions:

-Haim and Hoffman are complete revelations. Kulukundis (casting) deserves a medal.

-the plot is rather meandering and odd, but I'll hesitantly buy it.

-the dinner / atheist scene and it's immediate aftermath was top notch cinema. Brilliant.

-the thing that caused the most controversy (the guy talking to his wife) is cringe, no matter how you try to defend it.

-the mayor's secret boyfriend is the epitome of the "gay, sensitive, blubbering guy". I can't see peak PTA stooping to such tropes.

-I can't wait to watch it again, in spite of these flaws. This is not peak PTA. (The Master / Phantom Thread). But all PTA is compelling.

[Matt]

Because I apparently watch Buzzr more than anything else these days, I recently caught an episode of the old TV game show "Tattletales" featuring the comedy writer Jack Douglas and his Japanese wife Reiko as celebrity panelists. Douglas was a writer for Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, and "Laugh-In" and a frequent guest on Paar's shows. The Douglases' schtick as a couple was often based on her seeming not to understand English words or the peculiarities of American culture and on his over-explaining things to her in a comedic way. Reiko would also often do her TV appearances in traditional Japanese dress. Though Jerry Frick was a real San Fernando Valley restaurateur who had Japanese wives, I'm convinced that the fictional Frick and his wives is at least a partial riff on Jack and Reiko Douglas as well. It wouldn't surprise me if the Douglases weren't in Ernie Anderson's (PTA's father and a prominent TV announcer and voiceover guy) social circle in Hollywood in the '70s and '80s.

[therewillbeblus]

It's "cringe" because that's the intention behind it. That's a fair defense. If it weren't cringe, or intending to be cringe, that would be a major problem!

[Noiretirc]

It's "cringe" because that's the intention behind it. That's a fair defense. If it weren't cringe, or intending to be cringe, that would be a major problem!

Hmm. I ponder all of this as I read this thread.

Isn't it just as cringe as all the happy slaves in Gone With The Wind?

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

Only if you think being married to a white guy is the same thing as being enslaved.

[therewillbeblus]

Anderson is not endorsing this behavior, or pretending that it was okay. He's giving us a different context to gawk at based on our awareness of its problematic nature today. The joke is on the person behaving in a racist way.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

How are we deciphering that the joke is that the guy is being deeply racist and embarrassing is the joke itself in 2025? I thought we were past this!

[Noiretirc]

Anderson is not endorsing this behavior, or pretending that it was okay. He's giving us a different context to gawk at based on our awareness of its problematic nature today. The joke is on the person behaving in a racist way.

So we laugh at his stupidity? Or the stereotyping?

Anyway, I really don't want to detract from what I thought was a great film. I'm surprised at the amount of negative reviews, here and elsewhere.

That whole Penn/Waits sequence is haunting me. I desperately want a rewatch in order to make some sense of all that. Right now this film is like a half completed jigsaw puzzle for me. There's some beautiful looking pieces but I cannot find where they go. But perhaps I still feel this way about The Master.

[ryannichols7]

I never wrote about this movie but I love it. I just wanna chime in that it's very obviously mocking and lampooning how racist the 1970s were, and shying away from that would be inaccurate. even Inherent Vice kinda has Hong Chau play a bit of a stereotype character, since Asians giving "happy ending" massages are such a common stereotype. no one batted an eye then, as it's equally as accurate as the portrayal in Licorice Pizza

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

The Frick wives also fit into the film's grand anxiety over being replaced as other characters fail to recognize that the second wife is even a different person initially –– think of Frisbee's comment about passing along the baton (Gary) to Alana (which, incidentally, also makes her feel anonymous). Although some have criticized the film for being loose and formless, it's actually quite elegantly structured and most secondary characters do refract against the main relationship of the film. For further food for thought, although Anderson's engagement with explicit politics in his last few films have been perhaps excessively subtle (Inherent Vice tones down the book's political discourse, Phantom Thread throws in the "passports for Jews" aside with no explication), the Frick wives and the Japanese restaurant as a whole can be seen as part of a pattern of racial characters and characteristics being exploited for commercial purposes –– elsewhere in Licorice Pizza, there is the black store attendant at the mattress store who Gary talks to, as well as Alana's Jewishness being brought up during her conversation with Gary's agent.

[mfunk9786]

Anderson is not endorsing this behavior, or pretending that it was okay. He's giving us a different context to gawk at based on our awareness of its problematic nature today. The joke is on the person behaving in a racist way.

From what I have heard through the grapevine, this is based in part on Maya Rudolph's father, who lives in Japan and is (re)married to a Japanese woman.

[Monterey Jack]

I never wrote about this movie but I love it. I just wanna chime in that it's very obviously mocking and lampooning how racist the 1970s were, and shying away from that would be inaccurate.

I'm reminded of how the forthcoming Fantastic Four reboot is set in "the 1960s", yet will no doubt studiously avoid the casual sexism/racism of the era, and depict the era as a gleaming utopia that's squeaky-clean & peachy-keen to all genders and races!

For the thousandth time...depicting period-appropriate unsavory behavior in a movie set decades in the past is not an endorsement of it. How anyone can watch the Licorice Pizza scene and not get that the the other characters in the room are witnessing the crude stereotyping with a "What the hell...?" reaction are clearly not paying attention.

[Noiretirc]

I never wrote about this movie but I love it. I just wanna chime in that it's very obviously mocking and lampooning how racist the 1970s were, and shying away from that would be inaccurate.

I'm reminded of how the forthcoming Fantastic Four reboot is set in "the 1960s", yet will no doubt studiously avoid the casual sexism/racism of the era, and depict the era as a gleaming utopia that's squeaky-clean & peachy-keen to all genders and races!

For the thousandth time...depicting period-appropriate unsavory behavior in a movie set decades in the past is not an endorsement of it. How anyone can watch the Licorice Pizza scene and not get that the the other characters in the room are witnessing the crude stereotyping with a "What the hell...?" reaction are clearly not paying attention.

But why would they have a "What the hell?" reaction if this is...er..."period appropriate unsavory behaviour"? (What a strange term!)

Doesn't The Year Of Production mean anything?

12 Years A Slave at least had me cringing WITH the film makers.

Surely Fantastic Four can show all of the faults of the era AND cast a 2025 eye on it all?

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

It's insane you're still comparing the depictions of slavery with a white guy who speaks in a stereotypical accent to a totally normal Japanese woman. Describing 12 Years a Slave with the word "cringe" is also kind of insane. If anything you are the one who is not being mindful of the year.

[Noiretirc]

I'm using an extreme example of...er..."period appropriate unsavory behaviour" to (unsuccessfully, it seems) illustrate a point.

(With 12 Years I'm talking about cringing at the actual plot-points, not at something that the film makers did wrong.)

Anyway, I love LP. This sideshow is derailing that.

Edit: I apologise for not explaining this well.

[jd9760]

I feel like it’s just a beautiful movie about how being young doesn’t spare you from the power dynamics of adulthood?