Movie Nation

As pandemic break-up romantic comedies go, “The End of Us” isn’t half-bad. It turns out “less is more” in such films, and “End” scores over the big-budget “Locked Down,” the British “Together” and the French Netflixer “Stuck Together” by getting the simple things right.

Chemistry is paramount, and little-known stars Ben Coleman and Ali Vingiano have it, especially in their just-broke-up-and-quarantining-together brittleness.

The situations are simple in the extreme — impatiently seeking match.com matches while still sharing a house with your ex, “dating” during social distancing, quarrels over petty nothings, childish “I’m prepping for the L-SAT. I think I want to be a lawyer” and “I’m finishing my ‘Einstein’ screenplay delusions.

And the conclusion is more logical than satisfying, much like “the end of COVID” which we all looked forward to before certain governors and gubernatorial candidates with dreams of political superstardom made prolonging COVID-19 their brand.

Nick is an LA actor who can’t get busy live-in love Leah to put-aside her brokerage firm’s homework long enough to get her to run lines, undistracted, with him. Put another way, she’s the breadwinner propping up this “leech” who is “still working on himself” into his 30s, a grown-ass man still part-time bartending, still scrambling to find enough acting work to justify his effort.

The first real “joke” here is how self-absorbed (LA draws them like flies) they both are, and how they pretty much miss the coming shutdown/lockdown that is days in the making. She’s puzzled when the parking lot at her office is empty. He’s put-out that his audition is canceled, then his bartending gig is gone.

That’s the perfect time for her to chew him out and for him to storm out. But he can’t. And she’s not shocked to find him back “home,” either. He’s heard of a succession of “immuno-compromised” and the like excuses by phone. She’s getting a lot of cheerleading from friends for kicking him out, stuff of the “FINALLY” and “about damned time” variety.

That’s not the way it actually is. But there’s no taking back what’s already been said, no mending that which is permanently shattered. They’re stuck together, with him annoyingly-playing assorted keyboards and her struggling to hang onto her job and seeking further counsel from friends about this “ex” of four years still living under her roof.

The twists in the story include attempts to date while still trapped with each other, the form such “dates” took under lockdown and the slimmest glimmer of residual feelings emerging within a parade of google searches for “COVID-19 deaths,” Fauci press conferences and — lest we forget — montages of TV coverage of the inept lies, whining, blundering and attempts to cash-in on the crisis by the TPG, the fellow in the White House in America’s darkest hours.

Vingiano does a fine job of suggesting that Leah’s “needs” are battling, hammer and tong, with her sense of pragmatism as she tries to “maintain boundaries” with Nick and take up with an online connection (Derrick Joseph DeBlasis) without Nick finding out about it.

Coleman gets across confusion, hurt and little self-reflection as he brings a little something extra to the proceedings by providing much of the forlorn, pseudo-Parisian score by playing the harmonica-like mouth-blown keyboard called a Melodica.

The arguments are testy, but not nuclear. The “history” is sentimental and palpable, but with no promise of a “future.”

And the production is no more ambitious than working conditions would allow, serving up little reminders of lockdown lunch-dates — car-to-socially-distanced-car — and early COVID paranoia.

Joggers got no peace running down the wrong street. Someone was sure to yell out, “Could you put on a mask, please.”

Someday, we’re going to be nostalgic over all this, as one character suggests. Of all the movies made under COVID conditions and about COVID conditions, I have to say “The End of Us” is the one that hits closest to home.

Rating: R for language and sexual references

Cast: Ben Coleman, Ali Vingiano, Derrick Joseph DeBlasis and Gadiel Del Orbe

Credits: Scripted and directed by Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner. A Saban Films release

Running time: 1:32

It’s a “start civilization over with a (celluloid) film camera” drama story, and it looks lovely.

Dec. 17, “Last Words” earns a limited release.

John Malkovich and Frank Grillo also star in this Jan. 14 release, a tale of a rich guy imprisoned and tortured by a genuine femme fatale, and her henchmen.

He never finished it in his lifetime, but Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick…BOOM” might be the ultimate “Let’s put on a show!” musical. The guy whose grand achievement was “Rent,” the “musical for the MTV generation,” lays bare his struggles to get started, get on his feet and get a show on stage with a years-in-the-making musical he is about to workshop in New York.

If you’re putting that sort of plucky, Broadway Babies Make It Happen production on the screen, you could do worse than having the musical theater Man of the Moment, Lin-Manuel Miranda, directing it to life.

Miranda gives us a revised but affectionate, intimate and respectful adaptation of a stage show about one man’s deadline-obsessed creative process and how impossibly difficult it is to write and mount a musical and launch your career in the priciest, cruelest crucible of them all, The Big Apple.

And Miranda serves up a grand showcase for a singing Andrew Garfield, playing Larson and for rising star Alexandra Shipp, and a pointed reminder of the dazzling talent of Vanessa Hudgens.

It’s about a composer, author and lyricist stressing towards a deadline, struggling to put the finishing touches on the show — about to be “workshopped,” sung-through without sets or a full cast — for potential producers/investors.

He’s upset and frantic about that. But he’s even more freaked out by the fact that all this is coming to a head smack dab on top of his 30th birthday. He’s burned through his youth, his youthful potential and energy waiting on tables at the Moonrise Diner in Soho, living in an unheated flat with a string of indulgent roommates as he takes eight years writing and composing a sci-fi musical called “Superbia.”

I’m…running out of TIME!” he shouts at one point, as if we haven’t gotten the message long before then.

Garfield’s Larson is a Broadway “type,” relentlessly upbeat, a “show must go on” smile as his “public” face, even as the clock is “tick, ticking” away on his dream and the confluence of events piling on top of this one approaching morning in January of 1990.

That’s when his showcase “workshop” will be read/sung-through for a select audience of what he hopes will be Broadway luminaries. The film is framed in Larson singing and narrating from that showcase’s stage, with flashbacks taking us back to much that led up with what’s coming to a head right at that moment.

We meet the dancer girlfriend Susan (Shipp, of “Love, Simon,” “Shaft” and “All the Bright Places”) who is both his muse and about to leave for a job out of town, somebody who needs “an answer,” which is why she’s constantly telling him “We need to talk,” one of a sea of distractions he’s batting away.

“Everyone’s unhappy in New York,” he shouts at Susan, mid-argument. “It’s what New York IS.”

Debtors, an AWOL agent, the producer of the showcase (Jonathan Marc Sherman) and old roommate Michael (Robin de Jesus) are also among those yanking on his sleeve, needing his time.

And he needs a “second act” song for his character Elizabeth. Only he’s “blocked.”

As it’s implied that Michael, a high school classmate and actor who gave up his dream and went corporate, might offer an office job way out and that he might have been Larson’s lover and AIDS is the subtext of anything “Broadway” in 1990, we can see the distractions he faces are close to overwhelming.

He’s manic at times, extravagant — throwing a birthday party for his girlfriend when he can’t afford it, over-doing and over-spending on his workshop presentation. He’ll take “focus group” market research money, and the cash he can round up from selling his record collection, just to add another musician to the workshop band.

He works on that “missing” song, even as he’s having what could be a break-up argument with Susan.

“Scenes from a modern romance, as told in SONG” might work.

As we jump back and forth from Larson singing and telling the story of this showcase, and the tension mounting as he was struggling to keep all his juggled-balls in the air, “tick, tick…Boom!” makes us feel his pain and anxiety, if not share his suspense.

No, nobody ever heard of a Broadway musical called “Superbia” because it never happened. And we all know what’s coming for the whirling dervish of musical energy named Jonathan Larson.

As the show opens with a string of what could be called “affirming” tunes in the power pop modern musical style, it took a while to draw me in.

But Miranda turns the “What am I doing with my life in this diner?” number “Sunday,” a soloist-plus-chorus-piece inspired by Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” into a show stopper. The annoying New York customers in the crowded diner are Broadway royalty who join Jonathan’s vocalized gripes and dreams. Even a casual Broadway fan will recognize Bernadette and Bebe, Chita and Joel Grey. It’s downright thrilling.

Shipp and Hudgens have a lovely duet, “Come to Your Senses,” with “the one who got away” (Shipp’s Susan) and the singer/actress (Hudgens) hired to “sing” her part blended together in Larson’s mind.

Another showpiece is a rap number “Play Game,” about the compromises and demands made on artists just to get their play in front of an audience, knocked out of the park by Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter. It’s one of the tunes added to the stage musical, which itself had to be pieced together and finished and made Off Broadway-ready by Tony winning playwright David Auburn (“Proof”) back in 2001.

The funniest scene is the moment Larson treasured forever, a hilarious “public reading” endorsement by Stephen Sondheim himself (Bradley Whitford), batting away shallow complaints from a never-humbled blowhard of a Broadway colleague (Richard Kind, always good for a laugh).

Miranda keeps all this engaging, even if becomes difficult to keep all of it straight in your head. Garfield lets us see a man keeping “overwhelmed” at bay. But it’s difficult for the audience to share his (relative) calm.

The songs range from beautiful and fun, to generic and forgettable filler, tunes serving their purpose in the narrative, but little more.

There’s no getting around the places all these stresses, characters and juggled balls can make the show drag, here and there.

But “Tick, Tick…Boom!” is still essential viewing for “Rent” fans and devotees of Larson’s legend, and an impressive audition for more musicals from the likes of Garfield, Hudgens and Shipp. And Miranda fans? He did a much better job than the crew that filmed “Rent.”

Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, some suggestive material and drug references

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Bradley Whitford, Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, Richard Kind, Judith Light and Vanessa Hudgens

Credits: Directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the musical by Jonathan Larson and Steven Auburn, adapted for the screen by Steven Levenson. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:00

He’d done a lot of TV and bit parts in movies, mostly, before Clifton Collins Jr. first popped into the public consciousness with a gripping turn as one of the murders in “Capote.”

I interviewed him back then and he became one of those character actors I sat up and noticed, every time out, in the decades that followed. “Sunshine Cleaning,” “Veronica Mars,” “The Mule” and “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” are among his best known credits.

Hey, if Clint AND Quentin pick up on your genius, you know you’re special.

This Dec. 29 (limited) release gives Collins the rare chance to hold the spotlight, playing an aging, injured jockey looking for one last shot.

“Writing with Fire” is an Indian documentary of citizen journalism at its most elemental and vital.

It’s about Khabar Lahariya, the Northern Indian activist newspaper wholly staffed by “lower-caste” women who teach each other the journalism basics and then go out among the people, politicians and police and confront the neighborhood’s, region’s and culture’s most pressing issues with hard-hitting stories aimed at instigating change.

It’s what all journalism is supposed to be and once was — grassroots. And the women of Khabar Lahariya, “Waves of News,” practice it with a passion that’s inspiring and in ways that would make much Western mainstream media blush in shame.

In a patriarchal country where “rape culture” is a national tragedy shrugged off by men at every level of power, these women — some educated, others trained on the job — doggedly question India’s do-nothing because “Nothing can be done” police and politicians and ask questions at press conferences that have their male press counterparts patronizingly scold them for their impertinence.

Indian filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh (“Dilli,” “Timbuktu”) take us into the staff meetings and training sessions of this Uttar Pradesh (northern India) enterprise, and then follow some of the star journalists of the paper as it transitions into a digital media enterprise, gathering news far and wide via cell phones.

Meera Davi is the top reporter there, and we see her example spreading among the other staff. She is, she tells us, “Dalit,” lower-caste in a culture where the accident of birth is still everything. But Meera is, we learn, educated and had several jobs that used that education before.

Stepping into journalism, which she describes as “an upper caste profession,” she found her place in the world and started making her mark.

The camera crew follows her and fellow journalists Suneeta Prajapati and Shyamkali Devi as they interview rape victims, one of whom tells of repeated assaults by a local gang — “These men can do anything,” she complains. She is taking a terrible risk even speaking out.

“I am giving you this interview now. Who knows what will happen to us tonight?”

Then we follow the reporter to the police station, where the smirking, sunglasses-indoors Indian police of legend and international stereotype face their first-ever journalistic reckoning.

“Why was no report filed? Why have you done nothing?” wipes the smirks away with persistence and steady exposure via the spotlight of media attention.

This “afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted” ethos and “Why is nothing being done?” advocacy is applied to every story they report — illegal “mafia” gravel pit mines where child labor is employed, workers are injured or killed and villages swallowed up, helpless because the local authorities look the other way. Another village is decimated by a tuberculosis outbreak until reporting shames the government into action.

Violence against journalists in that part of the world is touched on, every so often, and emphasized with graphics.

As these women courageously step into situations, we wonder about their safety and if the size of the documentary camera crew following them might protect them. There’s always a mouthy local man emboldened by the local men around him into insulting the reporter, a woman alone, telling her to “know your place” or some variation.

What’s startling is seeing that behavior in press conferences where Meera, Suneeta and others politely ask blunt, hard-hitting questions and are chided by a scrum of media men who suggest emphasizing “the positive,” complimenting these political hacks, sexist, lazy public servants and openly corrupt louts.

One even takes his “mansplaining” to the street afterward, lecturing a Suneeta (in Hindi, with English subtitles) in what’s “simply not done” in such public press events.

A politician dismisses “rapes” as “mistakes made by silly boys” and describe rape as “a mental health issue,” code-language for “Do nothing about rape/poverty/guns” the world over. He is taken aback when there are follow-up questions.

The film’s third act shows the daunting task of facing the thuggish, racist conservatism of Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP Party at the local level — politicians and local leaders exposed as advocating violence, and the “protect our (literally) sacred cows” distractions the party’s backers fall for, take to the streets and riot over.

Meanwhile, the protestors have no indoor plumbing at home and bleak lives with limited futures, all a product of their gullible political choices and the cynical oligarchs who lead them.

And through all this, Khabar Lahariya “goes digital,” with its reporters not only learning and teaching each other the basics — just enough English to be able to use a cell phone, which many of them have never had access to, how to gather cover-footage, video inserts and the like.

The reporters find themselves patiently explaining video journalism to local politicians, who wonder why they’re videoing their entourages, getting shots of their homes and the like. The reporters listen to “send me your story before publishing” demands that they’ve learned to ignore, even if the American term “prior restraint” isn’t something they’ve heard or feel the need to explain to bullying officials.

Meera clucks at “self-styled religious gurus” who “exploit people,” and lectures her fellow reporters to ensure that they don’t simply uncritically amplify unsupported claims of such political-religious charlatans, but fact-check, dispute and confront them.

Wonder if she’s available for DC Press Corps workshops?

We see the skyrocketing impact of the newspaper’s new digital reach, its Youtube channel’s exploding popularity, the women doing “promos” familiar to any local TV station viewer, where the journalists herald their triumphs at “bringing change” to a ruined road long-ignored, epidemics responded to and the like.

Filmmakers Ghosh and Thomas give us a glimpse of the women’s home lives, the supportive (and not so supportive) spouses, the pressure from families to “not bring shame” on their Dalit lower caste status, as if either concept is anything but ludicrous.

We don’t get any notion of the newspaper’s business model, the way it pays its bills through the digital transition (a Youtube channel and a lean staff are but a good start). We only glimpse the training, and see none of the stumbling efforts to learn to be at ease doing TV stand ups, walking and talking reports and the film.

The film makes such “digital transition” stumbling blocks look as effortless as taking your first selfie. Having worked at newspapers going through that “change,” I can tell you, it’s not.

And for all the emphasis on “rape culture,” we never ever see a rapist brought to justice thanks to their efforts.

But “Writing with Fire” still a shock-to-the-system reminder that, as Meera says, “Journalism is the essence of democracy,” how “the People” get “justice in a democracy.” It’s not about click-baiting the most reliable if ignorant and “wrong” audience, trolling and “both-siding” issues as fundamental as the human rights, voting rights, right and wrong and the rule of law.

Let’s hope it “inspires” those who really need to see it.

Rating: unrated, discussions of violence, rape

Cast: Meera Devi, Suneeta Prajapati and Shyamkali Devi

Credits: Directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:32

Dec 17 on Hulu, kids.

This look at TV journalism and its fashion model “stars” “chasing ratings,” notoriety and riches looks pointed, scathing and funny.

“France” opens Dec. 10 in LA and NYC.

There are moments — whole stretches even — in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” where I thought, “If I was 10-12 years old, I’d love sitting through this.” The rest of the time I couldn’t imagine anyone OVER 10 wanting to.

A sometimes dark, occasionally warm revisiting of the franchise, it turns into a love letter to the late Harold Ramis, sweetest of the original “Ghostbusters” and the filmmaker who gave us, and Bill Murray, “Groundhog Day,” the romantic comedy that keeps on giving.

Whatever the stars, studio and director say about this project’s provenance, I’ll bet the Ramis resurrection was the deal-maker that finally got these “busters” back together. That, and the fact that original director Ivan Reitman’s son Jason REALLY needs a hit.

Because that’s the other take-away from this “Next Generation” reboot. Who would have guessed that Jason Reitman would turn into this sort of mediocrity? From “Juno” and “Up in the Air” to this? Sooner or later, the epic hype for this movie would have to end, we’d see the finished product and maybe for the first time consider that the son is no substitute for his father, “Ghostbusters” director Ivan, especially in a shambolic “romp” like this.

The set-up — the daughter (Carrie Coon) and grandchildren (Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace) of a Ghostbuster have gone broke in New York. There’s nothing for it but to load up the rusty Outback and motor west, to Summerville, Oklahoma, where the Dad who “abandoned” his family just died.

There’s nothing there but a tumbledown house on the prairie, “This is How it Ends” spray-painted on a rotting outbuilding at the farm entrance and “DIRT” sprayed on a collapsed barn.

We glimpsed the old man’s death, and know it wasn’t a quiet one. And it turns out, the eccentric the locals called “The Dirt Farmer” didn’t leave his descendants anything but debt. Well, debt and mothballed gadgets, an underground lair and lab and an ancient Cadillac hearse gone to ruin.

Here is the telling moment in “Afterlife.” If you’re the sort who gets chills just seeing that white Ghostmobile and its “ECTO-1” New York plates, this is the movie for you. If not? Well…

Teen son Trevor takes on a summer job to try and get to know teen temptress Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), brainy nerd tween Phoebe (Grace, from “Handmaid’s Tale” and “I, Tonya”) is packed off to summer school, where her teacher (Paul Rudd, well-cast) is content to babysit the kids with VHS horror movies of the ’80s — “Cujo” and “Chucky” among them.

That’s because Mr. Grooberson is too busy ducking into his office, which he’s turned into a seismology lab. Oklahoma’s earthquake plague isn’t all due to fracking, he thinks. Phoebe picks up on that, too.

“Yeah, I’m not an idiot.”

With her new friend Podcast (Logan Kim) who “named myself Podcast for my Podcast,” Phoebe will do her own research because “maybe” these quakes “are the Apocalypse.”

“Afterlife” skips through how the New York kids decode who their grandpa REALLY was, and figure out how his tech worked and even get the old Ghostmobile in running order. Phoebe’s matter-of-factly taken up a game of chess with a supernatural entity she hasn’t seen. She totally underreacts when she sees her first “ghost.”

“Over-stimulation calms me!”

Her brother gets a load of something demonic in the bowels of an abandoned mine.

But only Mr. Grooberson, who thinks “science if PUNK ROCK,” gives us a recognizable human freak-out when the impossible pops up, right in front of his eyes — green blobs, Stay Puft marshmallow minions.

The kids? They’re locking and loading and taking up where Grandpa Egon left off — saving the world

Whatever the original films meant to you as a child, few adults found much more than high concept, infantile goofs from the all-star cast, sight gags and New York savvy riffs.

“Afterlife” is a laugh-starved, jerry-rigged clunker that finds about one fifth as many laughs as the originals, leaning towards the “dark” side of pretty much exactly the same story as “Ghostbusters” –without New York, college coed giggles, without Sigourney, Rick Moranis nerd alerts or Bill Murray, Aykroyd et al riffing.

The script gracefully brings a couple of characters back and incompetently re-introduces a couple of others. Annie Potts‘ return is handled with particular ham-handedness.

Why the hell is Oscar winner J.K. Simmons even IN this?

“Stranger Things” alum Wolfhard and Grace are good, and easily pass for the grandkids of somebody who looks like Harold Ramis. But none of them, even Rudd, is a fitting comic substitute for the cast they’re meant to replace.

As “Ghostbusters” was a character comedy with action and special effects, but still mostly a character comedy, that matters.

But impressive CGI ghosts stir up a fury, backpack power-beam cannon still make stuff go “BOOM” and “GLOOP,” and every now and again, something funny happens.

It’s not awful, it’s just not all that. Which might be enough. If you’re 10.

Rating:  PG-13 for supernatural action and some suggestive references

Cast: Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Celeste O’Connor, Bokeem Woodbine, J. K. Simmons and Paul Rudd, with Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Bill Murray.

Credits: scripted by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, based on the characters created by Dan Aykroyd. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 2:04

For his latest picture, Paul Thomas Anderson turns picaresque for an unconventional romance parked on Hollywood’s periphery, lightly dusted with glorious pieces of Hollywood lore.

“Licorice Pizza,” like its title, flirts with being treacly sweet and serves up a teens’ idealized eye view of the same era that Tarantino settled into and sent-up with “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”

The director of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” riffs on the very early ’70s, back in the seriously unfashionable Encino in “The Valley,” where as “Boogie” reminded us, porn was king and those who never quite achieved Hollywood stardom could afford to live while they longed for the Big Brass Ring. They hustled around the edges, pieced together lives and flitted from fad to fad, always in search of the next Big Thing and a way of cashing in on it.

Characters are more sketched-in than wholly-formed as Anderson emphasizes referencing films as diverse as “Almost Famous” and “Taxi Driver,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Love Story” as well as his own “Punch Drunk Love” and “Boogie Nights.” It’s not about anything so much as youthful longing, and isn’t really organized to take us any place but where Anderson is, right here right now.

He gives us young people looking askance at those “successes” older than them. And if nothing else, he presents Bradley Cooper in a hilarious, over-the-top turn as ’70s hairdresser-turned-Streisand-lover/producer and epic Hollywood rhymes-with-trick Jon Peters. Cooper’s glorious send-up of Peters is one of the great pleasures of movie-going this year and all but takes over the movie.

And in a film that features an actress (Christine Ebersole) based on the “Godzilla” rep of Lucille Ball, that’s saying something.

Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour H.) plays Gary Valentine, the sort of average 15 year-old you wouldn’t give a second glance back then. Lumpy, with bad skin, untended teeth and that greasy early ’70s mop top that was never fashionable, Gary has just one essential advantage as he navigates life. He’s confident and well-spoken.

That’s how he has the chutzpah to hit on 25 year-old camera assistant Alana (screen newcomer Alana Haim of the band Haim) on class photo day. Leggy and long-haired in that Marcia Brady style, Alana wouldn’t have casting directors rushing to give her their card and scheduling screen tests. She’s ordinary, like Gary, but cute enough to be out of his league.

Only Gary’s almost famous. He was just in a big family ensemble comedy of the “With Six You Get Eggroll/Yours, Mine and Ours” variety. He’s done commercials and bit parts. He’s “known” — in Encino, anyway. And he is politely persistent in his pursuit of the fair Alana.

Theirs will be a long, circuitous courtship made more real thanks to business partnership. Gary will long for her and idealize her backed by the pop of Cher, the singer-songwriter love ballads of Gordon Lightfoot and the testy, brittle break-up rock of Joe Walsh and the James Gang.

He’s telling his kid brother “You’re gonna be my best man” the instant he meets her, throwing “You should be an actress” out there as he name-and-credit-drops his “fame.” She’s not interested, but not walking away from this kid who’ll “be rich and in a mansion by the time you’re 16.” But seriously, “Stop with the ‘googly eyes!'”

His first chance to impress is a dinner date, where we pick up on how every restaurateur in town is on a first-name basis — with a 15-year old. The second time? He needs a chaperone to do a guest appearance with the rest of that ensemble-of-kids-cast and their Lucy-like “star” (Ebersole, blowsy and mercurial) on a New York TV show.

Alana is on a plane, being hit-on by Gary’s smoother co-star (Skyler Gisondo), but the center of “her” teen’s attention and when she isn’t calling him “creep,” she’s impressed.

We follow these two through Gary’s rapidly-ending career and the ventures he has the cash and the wherewithal — Mom (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) runs a cut-rate local marketing/PR firm he finances — to dive into.

He wanders past a wig shop and sees a new “item” the hustler-owner has added to his line — big vinyl bladders, “waterbeds,” and senses the “next big thing ” He hears that the decades-long “pinball machine ban” may end, and conjures up an arcade.

All along the way, Alana keeps rejecting him, fighting with her “former Israeli Army” officer dad and convincing her peers she’s “NOT” dating a 15-going-on-16 year-old at the tail end of the Vietnam War and Watergate all the way through the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo.

Anderson recreates this world not just with tunes, cars (Gary bought a ’69 GTO, which he’s not old enough to drive) and the ugliest fashions in American history. He gets the complexions and body types right. Nobody worked out, no one planned very far ahead, the “Adam 12” era LAPD was utterly out-of-control and everybody listened to Vin Scully broadcasting the Dodgers…on AM radio.

I’m always fascinated by PTA’s take on runaway “capitalism,” the entrepreneurial habitues of the shifty side of the spectrum. This film has plenty of that.

John Michael Higgins plays the owner of the Mikado restaurant, marrying a succession of Japanese wives/partners whom he tries to communicate with via seriously offensive sing-song pidgin English, like Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Anderson packs the story with break-out episodes — Jon Peters wants a waterbed, a faded film “legend” played by Sean Penn hits on Alana, mainly to recapture his lost glory and have somebody to show off his fame to — peopled by funny but somewhat disposable characters.

Harriet Sansom Harris plays another agent “type,” an aged, down-market version of a character she memorably played on TV’s “Frasier.” She’s the one who hears the results of Gary’s coaching Alana to “always say ‘yes'” when you’re asked if you can ride a horse, speak a foreign language because “you can always learn something AFTER you’ve gotten the part.”

Anderson favorite John C. Reilly plays Fred Gwynne, dolled up as TV’s Herman Munster, in a cameo.

“Licorice Pizza” entertains lightly and drags along between its best moments (most involving Jon Peters) as Anderson is more interested in tableaux and tone than a straightforward story. By the time he packs in a political campaign with dark undertones, it’s become a movie that has as many moving parts as “Magnolia” when it might have held together better in “Hard Eight” territory.

If there’s a point, it might be that “kids grew up a lot faster” and less supervised back then, especially out there.

For people fascinated by the era, either as nostalgia or a distant past they’d love to know more about, it’s an immersive trip, “Once Upon a Time…” without the violence and with a lot fewer F-bombs. If it’s not one of Anderson’s best, “the good parts” stand out as some of the most endearing moments the movies have given us this year.

Rating:  R for language, sexual material and some drug use.

Cast: Cooper Hoffman, Alana Haim, Skyler Gisondo, Christine Ebersole, Tom Waits, John C. Reilly, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Benny Safdie, Harriet Sansom Harris, Maya Rudolph, Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. An MGM/UA release.

Running time: 2:13