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This is a clever idea: there is a framing story, and within it is a movie about a book that a character in that story has written. The thing is, the framing story is not particularly interesting, and the attempts to connect the themes of the "inner" story to it are thin and obvious. That inner story, though, really works and would make a pretty decent thriller on its own, if we didn't have to constantly cut back to the tedious main story. The acting is great, and the direction is quite effective. As it about half of the writing. Good idea, but does not ultimately work the way it was intended to. Worth seeing for the thriller within.

I am of the right age that I was part of the life this movie attempts to portray. I was living in San Diego rather than Los Angeles, but other than that, this was my life since I graduated High School in 1977. I know all about Licorice Pizza: it was the record store that we all frequented and where I bought the albums that were at the center of my life: Elton John, Pink Floyd, ELP, Chicago, etc...

The problem is, none of this movie is really about that time. It has the look but none of the feel. We were in our teens, we didn't care about the gas crisis. We didn't own waterbed stores. We played pinball but we didn't run pinball palaces. The story here is about people that pretty much didn't exist, or if they did had little relation to what most of us did and cared about.

When I heard the title of the film I thought "oh, great! A story that will revolve around that classic record store!" But it is nowhere in the film, and neither are any of the things that young people cared about at that time. Where are the beach parties where we burned wooden palates we store from behind Vons? Where is the sexual uncertainly, and the kids who got into trouble because of it? Where are the sleepovers at friends' houses? Where the heck are all the real kids?

I was so disappointed by this movie. Maybe it's just because this was such a seminal part of my life, but I thought it was for PTA too. Maybe he forgot.

Yes, the acting is first rate. Yes the film-making is wonderful and the sets and locations are all impeccable. But this movie is so self-indulgent, so bloated and unevenly paced, so repetitious and tedious, that it simply does not work.

I think perhaps Scorsese was too close to this. I know he'd been trying to get it made, like, forever. But perhaps his masterpiece was Raging Bull, and that was really DeNiro's picture. Maybe Scorsese is better when someone else supplies the vision. Like Paul Schrader.

Also, where the heck was Thelma? She's a brilliant editor, surely she must have know that the pace was totally off. That really has me scratching my head.

I wanted to love this movie, and I don't hate it, but it's maybe at the bottom of the list for me. That's a great list, of course. Scorsese is a treasure.