So I’m a big Paul Thomas Anderson fan, but hadn’t seen this yet. It’s a period piece about two people in the ’70s who have a kind of weird relationship.

The main thing that’s weird about it tbh is that one of them is a 15-year-old boy, and the other a 25-year-old woman. They have a meet cute at school photo day, where she’s handing out combs and he flirts with her relentlessly, asking her on a date with movie star confidence. (He’s an actor, and the sense is that he’s at least reasonably successful, if not like a real star.) She says no, I won’t date you, you’re fifteen… but look, if you want to just meet up for dinner, I don’t have any other plans, but it’s not a date.

So they go on this not-a-date, and they become friends, and eventually go into business together. The underlying theme of the movie is that it’s more than slightly weird that she’s spending so much time hanging out with this kid and his friends (which it is), but also he’s like her only friend and when she’s with him she’s e.g. starting up businesses and getting into acting, whereas her life without him is the kind of life where she’s handing out combs on school picture day.

So that’s what the picture is about, but the actual plot of the film, such as it is, is the two of them (either together or separately) having a whole bunch of fun episodic adventures, the kind of little sub-stories that could each be a short film of their own. There’s a bit with Benny Safdie as an idealistic councilman running for mayor of LA. There’s her date with an older, Jack Nicholson-like actor (played by Sean Penn), which involves a motorcycle jump through fire on a golf course; there’s the time they deliver a waterbed to Barbra Streisand’s boyfriend during the gas shortage, with some scenery-chewing by Bradley Cooper and some great stunt driving. So it’s not an arthousey relationship picture, it’s a movie full of fleshed-out, humorous episodes.

Which is good, because while the movie works on the whole, the relationship… I guess generously, I’d say it partly works. They’re both charming in their weird ways, and they really do vibe together, and they don’t like have sex or anything, but at the same time: There’s a clear romantic tension between the two of them the whole time, and also he’s fifteen for almost all of that time. It just feels a little weird. But then, that’s kinda the point — we’re not really supposed to be cheering uncomplicatedly for them as a couple, I don’t think; it’s clear that there really is something a little sad and weird about their relationship, just like most other things in their lives. This is ultimately a movie about a couple of misfits who can’t really quite figure out how to fit in normally, but have found each other, and the irony that even the person they found that works for them doesn’t really quite work either. The movie, like their relationship, is in tension with itself as it veers between fun and sad, and it’s never obvious which side is going to win out in the end.

Recommended, but I think this goes down as a minor PTA movie, the kind of thing that everyone will forget about, but if you watch it randomly some day on Amazon Prime, you’ll be like “huh, I’d never heard of that movie, but it was actually pretty good.”