Licorice Pizza, American Underdog

For years, I’ve been hoping that Paul Thomas Anderson would turn away from art-house auteur fare, with its shapeless storylines, twisted characters, and exasperating ambiguity. Picture PTA directing Fast Times at Ridgemont High and you’ll grasp the vibe of Licorice Pizza, a 133-minute rom-com in the early-1970s San Fernando Valley interspersed with various SoCal oddballs the youngsters meet while they’re trying to decide whether to start a romance. Licorice Pizza  anti-beauty, indie arrogance even delivers—I can hardly believe I’m typing these words about a PTA film—a big, satisfying smile at the end. The film takes its title from a Seventies Southern California record-store chain. Cooper Hoffman plays a 15-year-old high-school student named Gary Valentine who opens the movie by pestering a 25-year-old photographer’s assistant he meets while waiting in line for his yearbook photo. Alana Kane, is played with low-key appeal by another rookie actor, Alana Haim, for whom Anderson has directed music videos. She intermittently slaps him in the chops or flirts with other guys, but she also keeps hanging around him. Who wouldn’t? The kid’s going places. In his drive to appear smart, Anderson treats each sequence elliptically: Gary’s run-in with Lucille Ball; his TV-interview effrontery with Art Linkletter; Alana’s encounter with William Holden (Sean Penn), Sam Peckinpah (Tom Waits) figures; her defiant trick on Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) and brief venture into political work (Benny Safdie as a local pol). Anderson’s nearly cinema-destroying impudence contrasts with Tarantino’s fan-boy romanticism in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Anderson’s quite ugly aesthetic presumes superiority over the more conventional La La Land yet misses the emotional, life-affirming richness of the former. Despite lively episodes of assorted unresolved interactions, Licorice Pizza’s entertainment value finally gets vague. Gary and Alana's story feels unfinished. Anderson’s role model—Floyd Mutrux—used marvelous ’70s quotidian narratives (Aloha Bobby and Rose, American Hot Wax) and endowed his characters with wonder, using all the elements of beauty in a film artist’s arsenal. Source: www.nationalreview.com

Until the end of “Licorice Pizza,” Alana is in doubt about her relationship with Gary. But a subtle incident leaves behind a major impact on her decision that even clears the air of doubt too. While on a dinner with councilman Joel Wachs, she realizes that with all the men she had been with so far, it was never about her, instead of about them, their desires, their wants, and their public image. But Gary was the only person who never pretended that he cared because, in reality, he actually did.  Alana gets an epiphany of sorts when she finds out Joel Wachs was just calling her to avoid the suspicion that was being raised about him being a gay person. She has a brief conversation with Mathew, Wach’s lover, and for the first time, she lifts the veil and gets clarity. She is done with accommodating the idea of that perfect life and those feigned emotions because no matter how hard she tried, she failed to fit into it. She stops being pretentious and, for the first time, considers Gary as somebody with whom she could be herself. Gary, too realizes that he was done beating around the bush and that he needs to tell Alana how much she means to him. Finally, they meet, removing the ambiguity that smogged their relationship and welcoming each other in their respective lives for a happily ever after, maybe. “Licorice Pizza” leaves you with a cozy and warm feeling that might be said to be a tad bit optimistic but never deceives you by showing the characters in an idealistic light or devoid of any flaws. Source: dmtalkies.com

“American Underdog” is a winner. No single person can attempt to do the impossible; few souls understood that more than Kurt Warner. He was the guy who went from stocking shelves at a grocery store to winning the Super Bowl MVP award. But the good thing about “American Underdog,” the new film based on Warner’s rise to NFL stardom, is that it focuses on the love story with Brenda that helped bolster that Cinderella tale. Played by Zachary Levi and Anna Paquin, Kurt and Brenda faced many adversities and hardships before he took over for the injured Trent Green in what turned out to be a storybook season back in 1999.  While the football scenes are aplenty and slickly filmed, the spectacular debut with the Rams is more of a climax here. So, stop worrying about whether or not Levi can throw a spiral, and just take this as an old school romance with some sports thrown in. Levi and Paquin fit well into their roles, which helps the movie considerably. If you mess up these two roles, “American Underdog” sinks. They share some chemistry, offering moviegoers a small peek at the life these two built out of misfortune and some luck. 

We learn to love them as people first before the national sports power couple they eventually became–just like Kurt learned to love Brenda’s family before marrying her. Levi’s best scenes aren’t on a football field; they’re at home with Brenda’s (and eventually his) son, Zack. This is where the playing field shifts to more the actor’s natural strengths. There’s a gentleness to Levi’s giant here that balances out the life and sports hardships he faced. A key scene involving the Warners’ car breaking down in the middle of a snow storm, with Kurt walking for miles to get gas and return, reaches an epic scale. Levi and Paquin are too old to play the characters at this phase of their lives (Levi is 41, Paquin is 38), but their chemistry is excellent and they're both exceptional actors, so it's not hard to get past all that. The best thing about the film is its refusal to move according to the prescribed rhythms of the standard-issue sports picture. From start to finish, it prefers to focus on what's happening off-field. It returns to the gridiron only when it's time to set up the next career milestone, and the milestones are only important inasmuch as they affect the lives of Kurt, Brenda, and Zack. "American Underdog" is about a couple moving through the years and getting to know each other and look out for each other. This approach might be unique among sports films. In real life, after Kurt Warner was cut from the Packers' training camp in 1994, he got a job working the night shift as a night stock clerk at a local Hy-Vee grocery store, in addition to his work as an assistant coach at Northern Iowa. Warner's future wife Brenda Carney's parents were killed in 1996 when their Mountain View, Arkansas home was destroyed by a tornado. Warner and Brenda married on October 11, 1997, at the St. John American Lutheran Church, the same place where the service for Brenda's parents was held. Warner was still hoping to get an NFL tryout, but with that possibility appearing dim and the long hours at Hy-Vee for minimum wage taking their toll, Warner begins his Arena Football League career. After marrying Brenda, Warner officially adopted her two children from her first marriage; they have since added five children of their own. Source: rogerebert.com