As a whole, I’m not entirely certain what Licorice Pizza, the new 70s-set coming-of-age film from Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), amounts to. Pieces are absolutely magical, full of joy and whimsy. Others…are a bit more problematic, at best; downright cringe-inducing at worst. It watches like a movie where the filmmaker has zero checks and balances, able to indulge any and every flight of fancy with no oversight. Which is both a good and bad thing by turns. This freedom allows PTA to indulge himself; the flipside of that is, of course, overindulgence.
