You might not think that the same person who made a movie named There Will Be Blood would also make a movie as un-serious and sweetly-named as Licorice Pizza.

But writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s ninth feature film is as funny and heartfelt a film as he’s ever made. Licorice Pizza is a coming-of-age story centered around young love set in the 70s-era San Fernando Valley. And its cinematic bliss that will overjoy movie lovers.

Sweetly Nostalgic

After seeing her from afar on school picture day, 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) instantly falls in love with 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim). Gary immediately pursues the somewhat older woman. Though he’s sweet and sincere, she instantly laughs off his innocently expressed advances with incredulous disbelief. In her eyes, he’s just a doe-eyed kid.

But Alana is also lost and wandering in her own life. Gary continues to show interest, and she slowly starts to connect to him as another young person of pure-hearted intention and entrepreneurial ambition. It leads the pair to embark on adventures of all kinds throughout the San Fernando Valley.

First-Time Actors Wow

Paul Thomas Anderson has shown his talent for directing some of the biggest movie stars in the world. His resume has included collaborations with Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, and Adam Sandler, to name a few. In Licorice Pizza, he casts two young talents who have never acted in a movie of any kind before. It’s a bold and unorthodox move for anyone making a movie. Let alone for one with a sizable budget and Oscars chatter.

But being a master of modern cinema, Anderson’s intuitive casting choices are right on the money. Playing Gary is Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (one of Anderson’s regular actors). The young Hoffman channels his late father’s cherubic charisma and brings an irresistible charm to Gary. He wins over the audience by starting out as a childhood actor and ends as both a waterbed salesman and pinball store manager.

But stealing the show is first-time actor Alana Haim, whose center Licorice Pizza orbits. Music fans will recognize her as the youngest of the all-sisters rock band Haim. But here, she makes her feature film acting debut–and to impressive acclaim. Her performance is one that holds her own against some of the other real movie stars in the film, including Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits, and Sean Penn.

Free-Wheeling and Heartfelt

Hoffman and Haim’s effortless performances give the film a laidback and lighthearted vibe. The Boogie Nights director Anderson himself has said that American Graffiti and Fast Times at Ridgemont High were among Licorice Pizza‘s main influences. Their adolescent episodic adventure natures can definitely be seen here. It also has the artistic ambitions of channeling a time that the director knows and wishes to re-create so well. Much like Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood did for the end of Los Angeles’s sixties era.

Beyond its all-around enjoyability, Licorice Pizza advances Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmmaking style and voice as a director. And that’s entirely exciting to see at this stage of his career. The film is quite simply one of the best-looking films of the year as well (Anderson again hops behind the camera as cinematographer). I saw the film projected on 70mm film at Westwood’s The Regent theater, and it was one of my very favorite big-screen experiences I’ve had at the movies this year. I can’t recommend seeking out this heartfelt and incredible film for everyone I know.

2 hours 13 minutes. ‘Licorice Pizza’ is rated R for language, sexual material, and some drug use. Now playing in theaters everywhere.