Tom Hanks has definitely proven that he is not merely an actor. He can also direct, write, and produce, as seen in movies such as That Thing You Do! and The Polar Express, as well as in mini-series like Band of Brothers. So it was understandably expected that his newest directorial feature, Larry Crowne, would be as successful as his previous works. Sadly, however, I have to report that this is not the case.
I don’t really blame Hanks a whole lot, though. I mostly blame his writing partner for this film, Nia Vardalos. Vardalos is mostly known as the writer and leading actress of the big 2002 hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Since then, however, she never really wrote anything decent. She wrote screenplays for Connie and Carlo and I Hate Valentine’s Day, both of which bombed in the box-office, and she also wrote for My Big Fat Greek Life, a T.V. show based on the before-mentioned movie that was cancelled after 7 episodes. Vardalos’ writing track record was not so hot coming into Larry Crowne, and she is the one that I blame for the film’s corny script.
Larry Crowne is about a guy, played by Tom Hanks himself, who has worked as a manager for a big-box store for a long time, regularly receiving Employee-of-the-Month awards and making friends with all of his colleagues. Larry is then shocked to find out that he is being fired due to his lack of college education. You see, Larry went into the Navy after high school and never had time to go to college. Since he does not have this experience, he cannot be promoted to a higher position, so the higher-ups decide that the best option is to just let him go.
The opening to Crowne actually looked very promising. The idea of Larry losing his job solely because of his lack of education was pretty intriguing and topical. In today’s society, it is nearly impossible for anyone to hold onto a decent job without having some sort of degree. We are currently in the transition period of this change, where the long-time faithful workers, who rose to the position they are in without any special education, are now being replaced by degree-holders. In order to compete again in the job market, these people must go back to school again, as Larry does in this film. With the right direction and the right script, this story could have been a very poignant journey of a man trying to reclaim his pride and sense of self-worth. As it stands, though, the story is a clichéd, aimless mess.
So why doesn’t this story work? Because it meanders all over the place, like a drunk guy lost in a grocery store. In the beginning, it is established that Larry is going to community college so that he can become more hirable for the job market. After about 30 minutes into the plot, though, this motivation gets completely dropped, and the film focuses primarily on Larry’s wacky adventures with his new community college friends. Sure, we see Larry get a job as a chef for a diner, but it is only a part-time job to help pay for school and expenses. We never see Larry get a decent job with his new education, and he doesn’t seem interested in finding another job either, making us wonder what the point of all of this was.
So you would think that the plot would mostly cover Larry’s difficulty in adjusting to the academic life, right? Or the budding romance between Larry and his speech professor Mercedes Tainot, played by Julia Roberts? But no, both of those plot elements take a backseat to the true focus of the film: a scooter club of free-spirited young adults that take in Larry as a member, because he has a scooter or something. They ride around town, do stuff together, and for no real reason, decide to do extraordinarily nice things for Larry, like redecorate his house and buy him new clothing. While the scenes with the scooter club are kind of fun, they don’t really contribute anything to, well, anything. It just seems like these scenes take away time that could have been used to show how the college classes have helped Larry as a person or to establish the relationship between him and Mrs. Tainot or in another way the could have made this film more meaningful.
But what pains me the most in this movie is the “comedy”. Oh dear God, the comedy! Although some moments did elicit a light chuckle out of me (especially anything involving the great George Takei!), most of the jokes were extremely hokey and cliché-ridden. If you have ever seen a romantic comedy in your entire life (which, I hate to admit, I’ve seen my fair share), you will have your face squarely inside your palm throughout the whole movie because of how derivative these jokes are. I wish I could give you an example, but these jokes are so forgettable I cannot recall a single one. Just corny, desperate, unoriginal humor all throughout.
Let’s talk about the acting now, which was sort of a mixed bag. There were some standouts here, though. Like I hinted at before, Takei completely stole the show as the pompous Economics professor who takes Larry’s phone away from him each time he uses it in class. I just wished that my Economics professors in college had his creamy baritone! Cedric the Entertainer was pretty, well, entertaining as Larry’s next-door neighbor who runs a non-stop garage sale. And finally, I enjoyed Wilmer Valderrama as the leader of the scooter gang, as he keeps becoming jealous of his girlfriend’s over-friendliness towards Larry. I thought these were all decent comedic roles.
The actors that I didn’t really care for were, well, the two leads, Hanks and Roberts. Hanks’ Larry Crowne just comes across as extraordinarily dorky, and he is almost an empty shell of a character with no personality to speak of. Julia Roberts plays, well, Julia Roberts, as she has done in every other film she’s been in. Together, they try to make this movie into a romantic comedy, but it just falls flat because they hardly share the same screen together. When they finally share their first kiss, Larry’s hokey reaction to it just baffled me, since I didn’t see any indication that he had any feelings toward her. Plus, the love story wasn’t interesting enough. There weren’t any major conflicts or anything like that; they just merely fell in love for some reason. The romance, which I guess was supposed to be important to the plot, just did not seem believable to me at all.
I will say this, though. The audience that I saw this with had a median age of about 70, and it sounded like they enjoyed this flick. They were rolling with laughter at the jokes that I found insultingly lazy. So, I guess if you are a 70-year-old and Larry Crowne looks appealing to you, I would recommend that you just ignore everything that I just pointed out and go see it. For the rest of us, though, who wanted this film to be the time capsule movie that perfectly reflected the plight of the average worker in today’s meager economy, you will be sorely disappointed. It is hokey, clichéd, unfunny, directionless, and it doesn’t really try to speak to anyone. This concept could have been a great movie, and Tom Hanks just completely misses the mark. If you want to see a good movie about the current economy, I would recommend The Company Men over Larry Crowne.
Rating: 2 Stars
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Studio: Vendome Pictures / Playtone
Running time: 99 minutes
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