In a 12.29 scold piece, HuffPost’s Candice Frederick has described Licorice Pizza and Red Rocket as two of 2021’s “most lauded comedies.”
Rocket has been “lauded,” all right, but there isn’t a single solitary moment that qualifies as even faintly amusing, let alone comedic. The adjectives that correctly apply to Sean Baker’s film are (a) skanky, (b) icky, (c) bottom of the barrel and (d) appalling. It doesn’t make you laugh — it makes you want to take a shower.
Licorice Pizza is certainly an agreeable ‘70s hang as far as it goes, and it occasionally amuses in a vague sort of way, but “comedic” it’s not. At best it’s an in-and-outer…a dry attitude meanderer…even the Jon Peters waterbed sequence is somehow spotty and never quite lands.
