Just rewatched it... the movie is not that good.

The pacing is terrible. The Sean Penn sequence in particular is just an awful 15 minutes. The rest of the movie is five minutes of entertainment, five minutes of boredom.

And it's well below PTA's standards in terms of writing and cinematography. Running, what a brilliant theme! I can count the layers to that on one finger! Also, the entire film is white, blue, and orange. They could have a Licorice Pizza filter the same way TV shows have the yellow Mexico filter.

Also, the ending? What the fuck is that ending? I've heard praise for every other aspect of this film ad nauseum, but nobody seems to care for that ending. It's shot, written, edited, and performed like they just came up with it in the last hour of filming. It's so amatuer.

TLDR: American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Almost Famous, and Boogie Nights are all better.