One Battle After Another Proves Something We Always Suspected About Leonardo DiCaprio

This article contains spoilers for "One Battle After Another."

Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another," while loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland," weaves its fiercely political fervor within a decades-spanning story about a father who realizes he's just not a young man anymore. This certainly applies to Anderson in some respects, as his most recent body of work shows a clear evolution from the 27 year-old who made "Boogie Nights." There's a thread between PTA and Leonardo DiCaprio, with both former up-and-comers now embodying roles as mentor figures. 

"One Battle After Another" is a girl dad movie through and through. In the case of Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio), the former munitions expert of the revolutionary group known as the French 75, that means making a better world for his spirited daughter Willa (a star-making performance from Chase Infiniti). "One Battle After Another" not only sees the Academy Award-winning actor leaning into an impassioned dramatic performance, but it also gives way to one of his funniest.

DiCaprio isn't exactly known as a comedic actor, yet when he turns it on, it often leads to some of the biggest laughs I've had in a movie theater. His turns in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" and Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" see an actor who has seemingly mastered the art of playing characters who reveal themselves through their frustrations. There are plenty of quietly funny gags in "One Battle After Another," such as when Bob attends a parent-teacher conference at Willa's school and makes the teacher visibly uncomfortable by acknowledging the wall-adorned U.S. Presidents who were notorious slave owners.

The comedy centerpiece of "One Battle After Another," however, features DiCaprio doing what he does best: crashing out over the phone.

After Christmas Adventurers Club member — and Dynamite Dolphin jet ski owner — Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) performs a raid on his home, Bob makes his way to a pay phone outside of a local market to call the French 75's hotline. It starts off predictably enough with a voice, later confirmed as Comrade Josh (Dan Chariton), rattling off some cryptic questions that have very specific answers. Although Bob gets the first few right, he freezes in place upon having to remember the correct response to "what time is it." This scene keeps getting funnier with each plea to let that one passcode slide, only for Comrade Josh to keep asking it anyways. Bless PTA for turning this joke into a full-on running gag.

When Bob calls the hotline again at Sensei's (Benecio del Toro) place after having finally charged his phone, he's hilariously confronted with the exact same question. DiCaprio channels his inner Rick Dalton here, as he winces, cries, and yells for the location of the rendezvous point. "I'm a drug and alcohol lover and I cannot remember, for the life of me or the life of my child, the answer to your question," pleads Bob. The kicker is when Comrade Josh later chastises him with "maybe you should have studied the rebellion text a little harder" like a teacher speaking down to a student who didn't study for the test.

DiCaprio's comedic chops, when utilized under a director who knows how to use him, lead to the kind of collective guffaws that nearly drown out the next scene. I pretty much choked on my own laughter with the resolution to this whole conversation, especially when it reminded me of another PTA masterpiece.

Pushed to the end of his tether, Bob becomes a revolutionary Karen who vigorously asks for Comrade Josh to get his supervisor on the phone. Although presented under much different circumstances, I couldn't help but reminisce over the heated back-and-forth phone sparring in "Punch-Drunk Love." There's a critical moment when Adam Sandler's Barry Egan calls the extortive phone sex line that's been harassing him, and angrily asks to speak to the receptionist's supervisor. It just so happens to be Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the slimy Mattress Man antagonizing Egan's identity. "How do I know? You could be anybody," he says.

Unlike Barry and the Mattress Man, who come to a mutual agreement in person, the phone impasse of "One Battle After Another" ends on the perfect punchline. It appears that even revolutionaries have their own two-factor authentication in the guise of an alternate question that had me howling. Bob may not know "what time it is," but he sure knows what another Comrade's favorite kind of vagina is ("Mexican hairless"). The relief in Bob's voice after he finally gets the information he needs illustrates how pitch perfect DiCaprio is in this role. He manages to capture dramatic multitudes of a father who won't let his marijauna fugue, nor his confusion with pronouns, prevent him from completing his ultimate mission. It's just extra funny that a character who could make bombs and evade a white supremacist-led military convoy would nearly fall apart over a phone call.

"One Battle After Another" is now playing in theaters worldwide.