The feature’s canvas incorporates such figures - thinly veiled or otherwise - as Lucille Ball (Christine Ebersole), William Holden (Sean Penn) and Jon Peters, played by Bradley Cooper in a wildly exuberant turn as a libidinous cokehead madman in white cheesecloth post-hippie chic. Nonetheless, it’s just as much a love letter to the era when Old Hollywood was making way for New. Some comparison to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood seems inevitable given the ambling, loosey-goosey structure and immersive nostalgia, even if Anderson’s rose-tinted re-creation doesn’t extend, like Quentin Tarantino’s, to triumphal revisionism of national trauma. But unless you feel a kinship with awkward adolescent boys madly crushing on young women out of their league, you might wish for a more robust skeleton on which to hang a two-hour-plus movie. Make no mistake, this is an entertaining, Altmanesque fictionalized remembrance of things past, crafted with contagious affection for the period and bursting with eccentric delights - not to mention a punchy soundtrack of late ’60s/early ‘70s bangers (Sonny & Cher, Suzi Quatro, Paul McCartney and Wings, Bowie, etc.), augmenting Jonny Greenwood’s evocative and playfully eclectic score.

Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Christine Ebersole, Harriet Sansom Harris, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdieĭirector-screenwriter: Paul Thomas Anderson

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