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Thread: LARRY CROWNE (Tom Hanks 2011)

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    LARRY CROWNE (Tom Hanks 2011)

    Tom Hanks: LARRY CROWNE (2011)
    Review by Chris Knipp


    CEDRIC THE ENTERTAINER WITH TOM HANKS (LOOKING FOR A BETTER SCRIPT, PERHAPS)

    Tom and Julia doing nothing much

    Tom Hanks directs himself and Julia Roberts, alone with Cedric the Entertainer, Pam Grier and various others in this disappointing romantic comedy about a man who gets fired from a big-big box chain store because he lacks a college education. On the advice of a neighbor, Crowne (Hanks) enrolls at a junior college where he has Julia Roberts as his speech teacher. This is one of those unfortunate movies that blows up briefly while you're watching it and then deflates in memory to the trailer, which hit all the high spots of the plot and was more sharply edited, with all the fat cut out of every key scene. That fat drags down the movie, which Hanks directed too slowly. And there are a series of subplots and important secondary characters that never quite come together to create an energetic whole.

    Larry Crowne has been sanitized. All the spice has been sucked out, and not only do Hanks and Roberts have no chemistry together, but their romance is barely a blip on the scale. They kiss. Big deal. What is this, the Fifties? Worst of all, the writing is lame and unidiomatic. You wonder why stars of this magnitude took on such material, but Hanks deserves some of the blame for it, since he is listed as the co-author along with the star of the Greek ethnic drama My Life in Ruins, Nia Vardelos. She also wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which Hanks co-produced). This movie doesn't provide her with material as close to her experience. The writing here is flatfooted, lame, and tone-deaf.

    Larry Crowne has a whiff of the recent (and not very successful) Raymond Carver story adapttation and Will Farrell vehicle, Everything Must Go. That was about a man who gets fired from his job and is evicted from his house by his wife. All his possessions are out on the lawn and he stages a yard sale to raise money. In Larry Crowne, recession is in the air, but it's a colorful black neighbor with a pipe, Lamar (Cedric the Entertainer), who runs a continual yard sale. At the junior college Larry becomes friends with a young woman who calls herself Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Her boyfriend is Dell (Wilmer Valderrama), a Latino leader of a group who, well, ride around on mopeds. Like everyone else here, the once-hilarious Wilmer Valderrama of That 70s Show has been toned down and sanitized.

    The idea is that Talia spruces up Larry's style. This capitalizes on the fact that Hanks' character is hopelessly square by suggesting his squareness can be removed by wearing hipper clothes, having a haircut, getting a new moniker, "Lance Corona," and allowing his living room to be tidied up and rearranged in terms of Feng Shui. This is not a joke: it's taken seriously. This is the transitory, unconvincing world of the TV make-over show. It's just a shtick, and a necessarily half-hearted one since it doesn't even fit the most exploited aspect of Larry's character, his lack of pretension.

    One misses some satire of the big-box store world of the kind that occurs in the very amusing 2002 Miguel Arteta-Mike White collaboration, The Good Girl. But the hero too quickly moves on from "Unimart" to the less fertile ground for ridicule of "East Valley College." There are scenes in which Mercedes Tainot (Roberts) teaches her class and a few students emerge as individuals by making comments or doing little improvised speeches. There are references to the intrusion of cell phones in classrooms. Larry is, as it were, Talia's protege, and is drawn into the moped club, which goes to a certain eatery. Larry begins exercising an old skill, working as a short order cook: he was a hash slinger for years in the Navy. There is also an Introduction to Economics class -- it helps show Larry how to get out from under his mortgage debt -- and this is occasion for a series of lame and repetitive pedagogical routines offered by the benevolent dictator in charge, Dr. Matsutani (George Takei).

    Ms. Tainot has a failing marriage. Her husband has quit working and become a blogger, only what he really does all day is surf big-boob porn sites. The scenes between Tainot and her husband, Dean (Bryan Cranston) are extremely grating. Eventually there is a fight that suggests the marriage is over, and Larry finds Ms. Tainot waiting at a bus stop, gives her a ride on his second-hand moped, and the romance, such as it is, begins.

    The trouble is that all these elements -- the romance, the speech class, the economics class, the colorful neighbor with the perpetual yard sale, the moped club, Larry Crowne's makeover, the pretense that Talia's boyfriend Dell is jealous of Larry, float around in the movie on separate tracks. Not only do they not come together to drive a suspenseful or energetic narrative, but the romance between Larry and Ms. Tainot almost gets lost in the shuffle. Also lost, or at least poorly developed, is the theme of unemployment and economic troubles. It's not clear that Larry Crowne is going to be a new man. It's even a bit uncertain that he and Ms. Tainot are going to be an item. It's hard to imagine a screenplay more in need of a script doctor. And yet this was handed to two of the biggest names in Hollywood.

    Julia Roberts has a million-dollar smile, and her scenes halfway bring the movie to life. But this is one of her weakest projects in years. Tom Hanks is an immensely appealing actor and he might have made this kind of character and situation into something that would make you laugh and cry. But the material just isn't there. As Justin Chang points out in his review, Julia Roberts has been made to dampen down her charm and play her character as mean-spirited and angry and later as a one-note man-hunter, while Hanks plays his character as all goofy and cute, shamelessly courting the audience at every turn with charming (made-over) dorkiness. The combination of the two characters makes no sense. Julia and Tom were last together in 2007 for the Aaron Sorkin-Mike Nichols collaboration Charlie Wilson's War, a movie that was not an unqualified success, but at least was enlivened by a rich real-life political intrigue story and had some zing to it. This is a real dud. Avoid.

    Larry Crowne opens wide in the US July 1, 2011.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-02-2011 at 11:52 PM.

  2. #2
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    I happen to believe that any film with Julia Roberts in it is a dud.
    But that's just one man's opinion.
    Her "appeal" is totally lost on me.
    I don't know what happened to Tom Hanks.
    Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, That Thing You Do plus back to back Oscars
    for Philadelphia & Gump to steaming turds like this movie.

    Tom!
    Where's your agent?
    Do we need to send a rescue team?
    :P
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

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    Indeed. The only other movie he directed for the big screen, which you mention, is a good one. But lately...

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    I did the job of watching this for you. You can stay away from it with a clear conscience. Larry Crowne was a mistake on the part of all concerned, particularly Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. Both are big mainstream American stars. Both have done great work. This movie is a flop. It's not going to do well at the box office or with the critics.

    The reviews are out all over the country today. They were not available yesterday, though I did read Justin Chang's in Variety, wh;ich appeared prior to release. See the Metacritic aggregation of reviews: their score at this point is 41. That is exceptionally low for a movie with two popular stars. I don't think there is an angle that is going to make this draw in audiences either.

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    Finally A Down To Earth Romantic Comedy

    One can expect a good romantic comedy when the director, and, in this case, Tom Hanks, presents Cedric The Entertainer without all the over the top comedic fire works and stereotypical pranks that Cedric has oozed in most of the movies I've seen him in. Instead of the Jerry Lewis or more recently the earlier outrageous performances of Jim Carrey, Cedric is straight in his performance along with a subtle undercurrent of humor, a mark of a quality, substantive performance instead of the forced and easier physical comedic throwing everything at the wall approach. A good comedy doesn't have to rely on the usual prank performances and instead, Cedric's performance and its humor came from the story itself and the situation which in this case was quite in tune with the current and contemporary economic mood of the times which finds Tom Hank's character in a situation that millions of adults are finding themselves in across this country.

    What was so refreshing about this delightful romantic comedy was that it avoided the typical script format of the "romance" and played it much more realistically. The romantic comedy relied more on the basic story and a more authentic relational evolution of the main characters in this movie which was believeable and real. When comedy can become an essential part of our actual experience of real people who live it day and day and Tom Hanks ability to capture such real experiences as well as the aspirational and hopeful dreams in the movie script, LARRY CROWNE succeeds to connect with the average adult audience in ways that the traditional fantasy romantic comedies cannot. Finally, the mainstream adults are getting something relevant and directly entertaining in an authentic way that is powerful and meanfully significant in theatrical movie releases for our times.

    The only major flaw, unfortunately, comes at the end, when the climatic speech which seems so lame, as if Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address had been copied over from some petty third-rate script writer. Nevertheless, the movie hit home with its message in a way that required acting, a serious script with humorous moments that didn't have to rely on the dumbed down THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998) kookiness.

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    If more of us were as deluded as you, Larry Crowne might not be such a flop at the box office.

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    Let's qualify "such a flop". The movie already covered its $30 million budget with the domestic box-office to date. It shall collect another $10 million or so. Then there's foreign box office and DVD sales to add to that.

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    It's an artistic and critical, not financial, flop.

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    Pretty Offensive Reply

    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    If more of us were as deluded as you, Larry Crowne might not be such a flop at the box office.
    Boy something must of have happened wth Chris since I last posted. I've never really experience such bitterness and cruel words from such a heavy-weight before. It's sad that such a person needs to descend to such over-simplified and poor choice of adjectives. Such comments that i've received in the past from others, besides Chris, would be suggestive that I've hit some truth in my words because the last resort to truth is simple denial. Without any further commentary to back up the purported delusion, one might suspect that such commentary is only a projection of some other hidden message rather than true film criticism that is worthy of this website.

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    Perhaps I should not have commented at all. Our viewpoints are so far apart there is no area for discussion. To describe Larry Crowne as a "delightful romantic comedy" does seem to me deluded. But there was no bitterness felt or intended. Obviously Larry Crowne is meant to be a "romantic comedy," but there is not a great deal that is romantic in it and not much that's comedy. Not enough of either at least to justify the presence of these two big stars. The bigger stretch is "delightful," since there is scant delight to be experienced at this show. I notice you do however find some trouble "at the end, when the climatic speech which seems so lame, as if Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address had been copied over from some petty third-rate script writer." I found a lot more lameness than that but Oscar has pointed out that the popularity of Hanks and Roberts has made the movie pay its way.

    Not sure what you were saying about Cedric the Entertaininer, but he is one of a whole group of actors (I mentioined Wilmer Valdarama) who have been lively and funny elswwhere but are flat and forgettable here. Obviously there is a basic fault in the writing by the author of the dreadful My Big Fat Greek Wedding, (to mentiion her greatest succcess!), but Hanks knows a lot about acting so one would have expected him to coax better performances out of his cast. Rex Reed says in his review:
    During a surfeit of vampires, vulgarity, 3-D action comic books, CGI effects and worse, I applaud Mr. Hanks’s effort to write, produce and direct a harmless romantic comedy that exists for no other reason than unpretentious entertainment, but even with nothing else on its mind, a so-called “comedy” should engage the senses on some level besides the funny bone. This one just lays there like road kill.
    I am sorry if you took my remark personally. It was not meant that way, but only as a response to a reviw whose enthusiasm is incomprehensible to me. Seeing this film as "delightful" can only be described as deluded.

    IMDb User reviews are modest. One begins, "not a bad movie but somewhat slow." "The story does take a little bit to unfold," writes another. "Awful movie" writes a viewer, "very disappointed," says another, "mediocre," yet another, "wasted potential," someone else. One viewer chooses as his or her heading the word "fun," but can't be bothered to write more than five lines. And these are the public. Interestingly, though there are 141 external critics' reviews, only 61 IMDb users have bothered to write comments, showing a general lack of enthusiasm.

    You say, tabuno, that I have "no further commentary to back up" the purported delusion." But I might ask why you did not refute the criticisms I present in my full length review before calling this movie a "delightful romantic comedy."
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-17-2011 at 07:16 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    I am sorry if you took my remark personally. It was not meant that way, but only as a response to a reviw whose enthusiasm is incomprehensible to me. Seeing this film as "delightful" can only be described as deluded.

    You say, tabuno, that I have "no further commentary to back up" the purported delusion." But I might ask why you did not refute the criticisms I present in my full length review before calling this movie a "delightful romantic comedy."
    Chose not to opine to the original "deluded" comment until you had a chance to respond to tabuno's "Pretty Offensive Reply" post. Now I feel it's imperative and timely to do so. To state than anyone's perspective on/experience of a movie is "deluded" implies that there are ways to respond to art that are logically invalid. This goes against the power of film (and all art) to elicit a a variety of sometimes contradictory responses. Furthermore, characterizing someone's experience of a movie as "deluded" discourages the free expression of opinion and criticism in this forum. I also don't see why anyone should feel compelled to refute specific criticisms of a film in your review rather than simply put one's experience or opinions into words as an alternative take on the film.

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    Point taken. I apologized for my use of the word "deluded." However, there is a distinction between an experience and an evaluation which you are failing to make. One could also say that if tabuno's experience of Larry Crowne as "delightful" is valid, which in some sense it certainly is, then my "experience" of his calling it delightful as deluded is equally valid and not to be condemned, so long as we agree to be polite with one another. However, in a direct communication I recognize that the tone of the word "deluded" was wrong and I should have used a softer word such as misguided, misled, or beguiled. Or under the spell.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-18-2011 at 12:39 PM.

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