A Movie With Two "Controversies" -- Click Bait or Real?

Licorice Pizza has been out long enough to have generated some internet articles both "pro" ("Best movie of the year") and "Con" (no, overrated.) Its from Paul Thomas Anderson, who has "auteur" credentials and must be taken seriously with each new release.

And it also has two specific controversies, one big, one small:

THE BIG ONE: The age difference between the couple in the film. He's a "teenager." She's a "young woman." Though there seems to be some argument on this, as the movie begins, it looks like he is 15 and she is 25. But the movie is sometimes unclear on this, or how much time passes. Is he eventually 16 and she is 26?

THE LITTLE ONE: Two scenes with a restauranteur who has an Asian wife -- a different wife each time, but the deal is he speaks in a Japanese ACCENT but can't actually speak the language.

PTA has been confronted on these in interviews and I think his basic take is "yeah...so what?"

He really SAW a teenage boy hit on an older girl. He really KNEW a restauranteur in the valley who spoke with a Japanese accent and had a Japanese wife.

These elements are part of his movie. Deal with it.

I think it goes farther than that: in the internet era, these elements are helping SELL the movie. Because they create internet controversy, debates both real and fake. They give the movie a hook.

Me, I liked both elements.

The whole movie rests on an age old dilemma about love stories in movies: How do you keep the lovers APART? Well, in this case, you create an age difference that ensures that (a) the two have to be platonic "friends" for most of the film and (b) the two keep trying to find OTHER more "age appropriate" lovers(or, for her, older men lovers) -- and it never works. Because they are MEANT for each other. Seems to be the message to me.

There is a charm in watching Gary go to the Tail of the Cock restaurant to stare down Alana on her "date" with Jack(William) Holden. Gary even asks the owner to put him where he "can have full eye contact" with his older rival.

There is a charm in watching Alana see Gary go off to neck with a past lover and so Alana(dressed in a bikini to sell waterbeds in a store) goes over and kisses a random guy just to get even.

These kids are jealous of each other with other people, and (wonderfully) warring with each other to belay sexual tension ("I'm cooler than you, and don't you forget it" " I don't need YOU to tell me if I'm cool, old lady -- er, milady") and eventually they are going to ....SPOILER...get together.

So what's the deal on the age difference? He's a teenager, not a little boy. She's a 20-something, not a Mrs. Robinson predator. The whole story is about how RIGHT these two are for each other.

And maybe they have sex, and maybe they don't, but c'mon...in the 70's especially, young people weren't too concerned about statutory issues between consenting...young adults.

I figured they waited until the boy was 18. Or they didn't.

--

As to the guy with the Japanese accent. Well, its in there. American movies used to be filled with accent and dialect humor. British ones, too -- Peter Sellers made a career out of doing "foreign accents" -- French, Hindu, Asian. But I guess that's all over.

We live in humorless, puritanical times. The Hays Code is back.