"Japanese Humor" in PTA's "Licorice Pizza" and "Inherent Vice"

In reviews that otherwise praise "Licorice Pizza," it does seem almost obligatory to condemn the two scenes with the "restaurant owner with the two Japanese wives." The gag is a bit complicated, but based on his speaking a heavy Japanese accent -- and eventually revealing that he has no understanding of the Japanese language at all. (When his first wife speaks to him in Japanese, he is evidently faking that he understands her when he "translates" for Gary and Alana.)

A bad joke. But back up a few PTA movies.

The trailer for "Inherent Vice" makes a big central concept of the joke where private eye Joaquin Phoenix is having lunch with plain clothes cop Josh Brolin...in a Japanese restaurant.

Brolin interrupts his talk with Joaquin to YELL at the Japanese chef an order for what seems to be "more pancakes":

"Multi panicako!" "Multi panicako!" "Hai! "Hai!" yells Brolin. And the chef yells something back in Japanese.

Its the comedy highlight of the trailer, and a pretty funny moment in the movie itself.

And I don't remember it getting the "trashing" when Inherent Vice came out in 2014 that these Japanese scenes are getting in 2021.

I think the "Inherent Vice" scene IS more funny, and more reality-based (Josh Brolin making an order but evidently in rather broken Japanese.) But the "Licorice Pizza" gag has its own "smarts."

The deal in "Licorice Pizza" is that the wife "tells" the husband something in Japanese, and he reports it to Gary and Alana("She doesn't think we can do it that way, she asks if you can do this like this instead") but REALLY its the MAN'S advice..he's just using his wife's indecipherable language as "cover" for HIS ideas. As complicated as everything else in "Licorice Pizza" you have to seek out WHY the gag works like this.

That said, "dialect humor" seems to be going the way of the dodo. Back in the 50s and 60s' comedy Peter Sellers made a career out of dialects -- most famously French as Inspector Clouseau, but also Asian, and Hindu Indian. The TV comedy spy series Get Smart had a Chinese detective based on Charlie Chan called "Harry Hoo." And a Chinese villain called "The Claw" who seemed to be calling himself "The Craw."

What's odd to me is that it seems that every critic on "Licorice Pizza" sounds rather "ordered" to diss the Japanese restaurant scenes. Some went so far as to recommend that it should have been deleted (censored.) No one dared to say the bit was funny.

This harkens back to the most infamous "bad Japanese comedy performance" in movie history: Mickey Rooney's Japanese photographer (complete with buck teeth and slanted eyes) in the otherwise sublime "Breakfast at Tiffanys."

At least the scenes in Licorice Pizza are not THAT bad, and the two Japanese wives are REAL Japanese actors.