'Licorice Pizza' Movie's Concerning Age Gap Blasted as 25-Year-Old Dates 15-Year-Old
12/09/2021 03:40 am EST
Marketing
Many people criticized the marketing of Licorice Pizza, saying it intentionally obscured the age difference between the characters.
Only One Not Laughing
Some people were caught off guard by the storyline, especially when no one else in the theater had the same reaction as them.
'Artsy'
Viewers assumed that there was some unspoken artistic message in Licorice Pizza that was supposed to explain or provide commentary on the age gap between the characters. If that was the case, they felt it had failed.
Success
Others got the exact opposite impression – that the age gap was central to the story and that all the commentary on it was self-evidence.
Romanticizing
Still, regardless of the filmmaker's intentions, some critics feared that this movie would only serve to romanticize vast age differences in relationships, justifying real-life manipulation somewhere down the line.
Double Standard
Arguments broke out in the comments to defenders of this film as people accused them of enforcing a double standard. They felt certain that the discourse would look completely different if the characters' genders were swapped.
Real Life Example
Critics posted photos of real-life 25-year-old women beside real-life 15-year-old boys to drive home the strangeness of this plot. They thought that if the actors had been cast in their real ages, the romance would have been played more honestly.
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