| Tom Hanks is a nice guy. Larry Crowne is a nice guy. But as a movie, “Larry Crowne” is only somewhat likable. Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) is fired from his 9-time-employee-of-the-month job at U-Mart. Yes, we’re supposed to feel sorry for him, and we do, but it’s mostly played up for laughs. The most we get into the psychology or economics of the down-sizing is that “times change.” |
| 2011
Directed by: Tom Hanks
Screenplay by: Tom Hanks and Nia Vardalos
Starring: Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts |
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| Tom Hanks stars as LARRY CROWNE, an Alliance Films' release. |
Determined to not be down-sized again, Larry is off to college, for the first time. This is the beginning of the end for the movie, because all the characters we meet at college are on the losing end of the need for cheap laughs. The college dean is obsessed with one of the teachers. Why? Because it provides a few laughs—that’s the only reason. On his first day of classes, Larry meets Talia who is going to help Larry reinvent himself. Why would a likable guy like Larry allow a hippie college girl to teach him about life? There aren’t even any real laughs with their relationship, so there’s no reason at all. Talia then introduces Larry to a gang of scooter riders. Apparently they have all seen “West Side Story” (1961), but there’s no way if you went to your local community college would you find that many kids so familiar with the movie.
Opposite Larry (in every sense of the word), is Mercy (Julia Roberts), an unhappy, alcoholic “teacher”. I would classify her as one of the worst possible teachers. She claims that she wants her students to care and she wants to change their lives, but she doesn’t actually want to teach. She doesn’t want to show up on time for class, and she just sits there hung over. My biggest problem with “Larry Crowne” is that I’m pretty sure we were supposed to like and care for this creature. She’s going through a divorce. But she’s divorcing Dean (Bryan Cranston) and sure he’s a lazy, lying has-been, but he made me laugh with every line he said. (But then again, I like Cranston so much I would probably even marry him as Walter White in “Breaking Bad”).
When it’s just Hanks and Roberts, playing off of each other, the movie is adorable and funny. Their chemistry is perfect, and that’s exactly what “Larry Crowne” needs, but they don’t give me enough of it. Hanks and Roberts one-on-one (even throw in Cranston and George Takei) and the movie would have been significantly better. An adult romantic comedy with minimal romance and PG-comedy is welcome and refreshing, but the romance was down-played too much and the comedy was too juvenile and not very funny.
The best part of the movie is George Takei playing the greatest and funniest economics professor you could ever imagine. He was given enough time, but again, only for laughs, there’s just so little reason for anything occurring. |
