Movies

Like most movies I'm really looking forward to seeing, I'd scanned many of the Licorice Pizza media reviews. And I can across Dave Poland's review in his Hot Button column. And among the "gems" I came across in that review included: 

"However you feel about Being The Ricardos, Christine Ebersole wins the Best Lucy award for the year, going away."

Let's be perfectly clear here: There isn't a soul who is going to walk in off the street, walk in to see this movie, watch those couple of scenes and think "well, that's OBVIOUSLY a version of Yours, Mind and Ours, and this woman is OBVIOUSLY portraying Lucille Ball. EVERYBODY remembers Yours, Mine and Ours and it's clear as day that this woman is portraying Lucille Ball". 

It's the kind of "inside" take that you only get from critics showing off the stuff they know from the production notes or interviews of PTA. 

I KNOW Yours, Mine and Ours, and it didn't immediately leap to mind when i was watching it for crying out loud. 

Here's another one: 

"The Spielberg Sisters are a funny trick in the film, as they don’t look exactly alike, but they look enough alike to make the audience unsure if they are playing the same character in different acts". 

Right, okay. I"m sure everybody in the theater leaps out of their seats, exclaiming; "Wow! There's Spielberg's kids. Of course we all know just what they look like, we all know the Spielberg kids like we know Steven, we see all their faces pretty equally in our culture, that sure was cool that the Spielberg kids were in this flick". 

Good God. 

And yet again: 

"Gary Goetzman, on whim the character is based, is hugely successful as a producer, partnered with Tom Hanks, with their biggest financial success being Mamma Mia!, a show and movie led by and about women.". 

Raise your hand if you think that Joe Popcorn in Deluth knows all about Gary Goetzman. Or that he's a successful producer, or that he's the inspiration for the Hoffman character. Raise your other hand if you think anybody out there other than people that work in the industry and live in the Valley could give a single sh*t about it. 

Here's the thing. I thought that Licorice Pizza was fine. I love PTA, and I've come to accept that for me, his movies can be a bit hit and miss. He's made some of my very favorite films of all time, and he's made a few that I couldn't give a thumbs up to. 

In this case, with Licorice Pizza, this is obviously a personal little film about a slice of life that he's personally tied to emotionally. Critics resort to explaining all the little details, where they come from, what the inspirations are for them, who characters are based on, all this stuff, which doesn't exactly amount to anything much that a general audience will give a rip about. 

This is not a film like Boogie Nights. It's not a film like There Will Be Blood. It's a small, mostly plotless, episodic little movie about PTA's personal neighborhood. And for the most part, people outside of that neighborhood (the Valley, the film business, North LA politics) are going to watch this, shrug, and move on. And many of them are going to walk out of it scratching their collective heads over all the media hosannas that are being tossed the film's way. 

One of the things I"m most interested about, regarding the film in hindsight, is continuing to watch Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score vs Audience Score for this film, once the "public"starts seeing it. During the first month, when the audience consisted of people from SoCal (of NYC), the audience score was surpassing or even with the critics score. Checking this afternoon, I see that the audience score has now dipped down to 78%. And I'll be very interested to see where the audience score sits in a few more weeks, now that the movie is opening wider, and more people outside the prime audience see it.