“Licorice Pizza” has nothing to do with Licorice or Pizza or really anything. This movie is a disjoined series of scenes that are leap-frogged together to create a very strange, too weird to explain production that I have no idea is getting 92% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

This movie stars two unknowns Alana Haim as Alana and Cooper Hoffman as Gary – who is in the late 1960’s, in high school, and enter into what starts as a typical erratic high school relationship. What follows is a stage production for Gary, to a location that requires a plane flight – maybe NYC, to jealousy in the relationship, to both of them getting into water bed sales (I kid you not), to them selling a bed to John Peters, boyfriend of Barbara Streisand in the early 1970’s to find out that John Peters is insane and almost blows up a gas station. To a new pinball shop that Gary starts. To Alana getting involved with Politics. It’s one scene, to another, no continuity, no set-up, no logic, and no train of thought. This is movie-making on LSD, or after slamming your head against a wall for 30 minutes.

For some reason, both Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn are in this movie, perhaps as a favor to Paul Thomas Anderson who both wrote and directed this insane film – in an attempt to drive up the box office.

Once again, I have no idea why this movie is getting high review numbers because, for me, this is just one of the strangest waste of 2 hours I have ever sat through.

Clearly, I do not recommend this film under any circumstances.