It’s set in Encino, a Los Angeles outpost in the shadow of Hollywood and the birthplace of such films as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Boogie Nights,” Anderson’s 1997 breakout about a striver’s passage into pornographic stardom.
Deranged optimism and self-importance are American birthrights, and if his confidence weren’t so poignantly outsized — and if Anderson were in a tougher mood — Gary would be a figure of tragedy rather than of comedy.
But his love for Gary is special, as lavish as that of an indulgent parent, and his affection for the character is of a piece of the soft nostalgic glow he pumps into “Licorice Pizza,” blunting its edges and limiting the film’s overall effect.
He’s knocked out by Alana, instantly smitten, a thunderbolt moment that Anderson memorializes with a prodigious tracking shot that gets both the camera and the story’s juices going.
He dips into bars and restaurants, shops and audition rooms, and belts out a tune in a show where he upstages a cruelly funny stand-in for Lucille Ball , a wee smoothie who slides in like Dean Martin in his cups, which is as sleazy and silly as it sounds.
Her expressive range — her face drains and fills as effortlessly as if she were handling a water tap — and humanizing lack of vanity are crucial, partly because she’s a delight to watch and because Hoffman is a frustratingly limited foil.
“Do you think it’s weird,” Alana asks a friend, while smoking a joint, “that I hang out with Gary and his friends all the time?” Alana says she think it’s weird , but what she believes doesn’t have much bearing on the story and she continually bends to suit Gary’s needs as well as Anderson’s, which don’t include psychological realism.
These moments are in line with some of the more flagrantly obnoxious stereotypes that he folds in, just like a studio hack might have done back in the day while having a witless chuckle.
One of the recurrent beats that Anderson hits best in “Licorice Pizza” is what it’s like to live in a company town like Los Angeles, where everyone is in the business, seems to be, or wants to be, and so keeps hanging on to Hollywood and its promise, whether it’s Gary or the faded and midlevel stars idling in the neighborhood joint.
The movie doesn’t always know what to do with Alana other than dog after her, and it’s a particular bummer that while Anderson makes her an object of love and lust, he shortchanges her sexual desire.
She’s a natural, a genius, Streisand, Andretti, a California goddess, and, as she brakes and slows and goes, Alana gives you a vision of perfection and “Licorice Pizza” the driver it needs.