Licorice Pizza (2021)

meStevo said:

I enjoyed it like I enjoy much of what PTA does, disappointed Philip Seymour Hoffman isn't alive to see his son's performance in this.

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Better than his selfish, coward dad?

Fun movie. Regarding the controversy about the female lead being a pedophile, PTA said that the first inspiration for the movie was him seeing a high schooler hitting on a woman taking his school photos and thought that would be a funny premise for a movie. However, a lot of the scenes in the movie are based on the experiences of his real-life friend Gary Goetzman, who did open a waterbed store that later became a pinball store... but Goetzman was 18 when he opened the store, not 15.

If the character of Gary in this movie was made to be 17/18, I think it would've felt a lot less weird (you could still have the "comedy" of a high schooler trying to hit on a woman almost 50% older than him and she could still be resitant about it at first with a line like 'you're a high-schooler). But the whole time I was watching, I had this nagging at the back of my mind that it could be a vehicle for trying to push for pedophile or "MAP" tolerance. Maybe it's just bad timing on the film's part.

Paul Thomas Anderson seems like a normal dude, but you just never really know...

Bonus: the official Amazon promo still for this film contains Alana Haim's nipple:

Leevonroy said:

Was hoping it was about a music store in so cal from the 80's that shared the name.

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It is - tangentially, anyways. It's basically Fast Times or Dazed and Confused, but with specific emphasis on being in the valley. Most of the locations the characters go to and most of the events in the film were places that existed and things that really happened, but they're so small in scale that I didn't understand that they were significant until I read up on them later.

Guurn said:

I liked it into I didn't. It just kept going on and on. They had all these great actors, it felt like they just wanted to get each of them a scene so they kept writing stuff and extending they movie inn pointless ways. Since of the scenes are great but they add nothing to the story. This needed heavy editing.

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Kinda my thoughts too. First half was really good and then it just started dragging on and on. Overall a good movie but could be a bit shorter.

Interesting, I thought the opposite - the beginning was very unfocused and needed to leave more on the cutting room floor while the back half was a lot more interesting.

Was watchable but I spaced out late into the 3rd act and it was hard to get re-interested again in the climax.

Needed a trim.