Parents' Guide to Licorice Pizza

Relaxed and rambling, this lovable, hazy, sunny dramedy is likely Paul Thomas Anderson's funniest movie, and its seeming lack of ambition elevates it above some of his more challenging efforts. The title Licorice Pizza comes from a beloved record store of that time and place, and although the store itself never appears in the movie, it features plenty of pop and rock tunes that might have been purchased there. The movie feels expansive and slightly off-kilter, with a parade of character actors drifting in and out of the background, sometimes for almost no reason, as when a film director (Tom Waits) challenges a drunken actor (Sean Penn) to jump his motorcycle over a bonfire. And Bradley Cooper has a very funny sequence as a pompous Hollywood power player.

As in Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love and Phantom Thread, the world of Licorice Pizza revolves around its two central characters and their shifting relationship dynamics (even if the mood is closer to Boogie Nights or Inherent Vice). Gary actually recalls Max Fischer in Wes Anderson's Rushmore: a suave, smooth-talking adult trapped in an inelegant child's body, able to talk anyone into anything. Alana (who's a real-life member of the pop group HAIM) is plucky and stubborn, as evidenced in the exhilarating sequence in which she coolly pilots a gasless delivery truck downhill through the city. The movie's wandering, barely connected events can't really be called a "story," but the end result still feels meaningful. Perhaps a clue to its central theme lies in its title. Why call the movie Licorice Pizza? Why not?