Larry Crowne

Larry Crowne - Dir. Tom Hanks (2011)

Tom Hanks has earned his reputation as an all-around nice guy and one of the most likeable actors in Hollywood. Hanks brings every ounce of that likeability for Larry Crowne, which marks his second film as a director following his debut behind the camera with 1996's That Thing You Do!

Hanks stars as the titular Larry Crowne, a mid-level employee for U-Mart, a big-box retailer resembling Target. Larry enlisted in the Navy straight out of high school and never went to college. This lack of higher education is cited as the primary reason for his lack of promotion into upper management. Since he can no longer advance any further, U-Mart executives decide to fire him despite years of exemplar service.

Larry finds himself in an all too familiar situation as a divorced, middle-aged man who is now unemployed and saddled with a mortgage he can no longer afford. Left with few options, Larry decides to enroll in community college. Thus begins a series of life-changing events for our affable protagonist.

First, he trades in his gas-guzzling SUV for a sporty scooter and befriends the cute and free-spirited Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who renames him "Lance Corona" and recruits him into her scooter gang. She even gives Larry a makeover, giving him a new hairdo and ditching his dorky polo shirts for a hip leather jacket. Next, Larry signs up for a morning class on informal speaking taught by the disillusioned Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts). Not only has she lost her passion for academia, but she also deals with a husband (Bryan Cranston), who considers posting on internet message boards as creating a beachhead in new media. He also surfs for porn, but since this is a PG-13 movie, the women are fully clothed.

In addition to directing, producing, and starring in Larry Crowne, Tom Hanks co-wrote the script with Nia Vardalos, whose My Big Fat Greek Wedding was championed by Hanks and wife Rita Wilson. Vardalos has yet to recapture the same success and the middling response to the clichéd Larry Crowne won't change that. The way in which the film offers sitcom solutions to complex issues borders on condescension. Is a degree from a community college really going to protect someone from the economic downturn? I know people with Master's degrees who are still having a rough time in the job market. How does Larry Crowne still manage to stay afloat in Los Angeles while working as a part-time short order cook? Sometimes Crowne comes off more as a man going through a mid-life crisis when he's wearing a leather jacket and wallet chain.

Larry Crowne was released the same weekend as Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It certainly serves its purpose as counter-programming to the hordes of loud, effects heavy blockbusters. Hanks and Roberts (who gets more beautiful with age) have a winning chemistry together and there are some fun performances from Taraji P. Henson and Rami Malek as an annoyingly dim classmate. Without a doubt, the best thing in the movie is George Takei as an eccentric economics professor. The boisterous Takei steals every one of his scenes. I wouldn't want to see Larry Crowne 2, but I'd readily shell out twelve bucks to see a spin-off starring the former Mr. Sulu.

It's obvious Larry Crowne was meant as a soothing salve on the gaping wounds caused by the financial collapse with Hanks serving as a modern day Frank Capra or Preston Sturges. Sadly, Hanks is unable to capture the heart and wit of those cinematic masters. It is simply populist pabulum with a tone as affable and easy-going as its leading man.

Rating: ** (*****)

Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love - Dir. Ryan Murphy (2010)

To say Elizabeth Gilbert's globe-trotting memoir, Eat Pray Love, was a smash hit would be an understatement. It was pimped by Oprah Winfrey and translated into over thirty languages.. It also spawned a slew of merchandise like Eat Pray Love jewelry, Eat Pray Love journals, Eat Pray Love perfume, and even Eat Pray Love lip gloss. No word on Eat Pray Love: The Flamethrower. Obviously it touched a nerve with women around the world and a feature film version was inevitable.

Julia Roberts plays the on-screen version of Gilbert, a freelance journalist stuck in an unhappy marriage with her husband, Steven (Billy Crudup). After the divorce, she engages in a rebound relationship with a sensitive young actor named David (James Franco). Still not content, Gilbert wants to go on a year long quest to find herself and her sympathetic publisher (Viola Davis) provides an advance to cover expenses.

The first leg of the journey takes her to Rome where she indulges in rich Italian cuisine. She even learns Italian from a hunk with the unlikely name of Luca Spaghetti. After four months of food, wine, and friends, Gilbert heads to India where she'll meditate in an ashram for the 'Pray' section of her adventure. Here, she meets Tulsi (Rushita Singh), a young girl readying for an arranged marriage, and Richard (Richard Jenkins), a recovering alcoholic from Texas who imparts barbs of wisdom on the soul-searching protagonist. After another four months, Gilbert concludes her voyage in Bali in order to study with a ninth-generation medicine man (Hadi Subiyanto) she met on an earlier trip. It is here that Gilbert hopes to find a balance between life and spirituality when the 'Love' portion of the film kicks in. She falls for an exceedingly swarthy Javier Bardem as a Brazilian businessman and fellow divorcee.

As a 30-year old male, I am hardly the targeted audience for Eat Pray Love. I haven't read the original book either. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why it managed to captivate its audience enough to stay on the New York Times bestseller list for 187 weeks. Whatever the reasons, it didn't come across in the big-screen adaptation. The film's failures certainly don't fall on the shoulders of the cast. Julia Roberts does a great job of being Julia Roberts. When you hire her for the lead, it's because she's the embodiment of the beautiful Hollywood starlet and she can connect with movie-goers. Billy Crudup, James Franco, and Javier Bardem are all good as the men in her life, despite being relatively thin roles. Viola Davis and Richard Jenkins bring an additional layer of gravitas whenever they are present. Davis always seems to carry things to another level no matter how small her parts are. In Jenkins' case, his speech about the reasons why he's at the ashram is engrossing and nearly hijacks the entire movie.

The problem is the film lacks the raw substance necessary to truly latch onto it. Ryan Murphy, the creator of Nip/Tuck and Glee, directed the picture and co-wrote the script with Jennifer Salt. He does a fair job technically, but is unable to imbue the story with any sort of genuine emotional resonance. When we first meet Gilbert, all we know is that she is unhappy for whatever vague reasons. Once Eat Pray Love launches into a series of exotic locations, it becomes a cross between a travelogue and a reality show on Food Network. It's hard to sympathize with a well-to-do New Yorker who's getting paid to go on vacation. Someone who's biggest problem seems to be being unable to fit into her jeans after eating too much pizza. As the film concludes in Bali, it shifts into a standard romantic comedy as Roberts and Bardem pull a meet cute after he nearly runs her over. The conclusion flies in the face of the one of the film's central themes. Gilbert had defined herself based on her relationships and learned she didn't need a man to be happy. So of course, she finds one to literally ride off into the sunset with. Finally, the film is just way too long, clocking in at 133 minutes with a 146 minute director's cut hitting DVD and Blu-Ray. There's just too much eating, praying, and loving.

Eat Pray Love is a shiny, polished production set in good-looking locations populated by good-looking people. It's a chick flick through and through, but one that is not nearly as soulless as the Sex and the City movies. I'm sure someone else will give it three or four stars, but I didn't find it nearly as appetizing.

Rating: * ½ (*****)

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day - Dir. Garry Marshall (2010)


As I wrote in my review for New York, I Love You, anthology films can be a mixed bag filled with hits and misses. That isn’t the case with Valentine’s Day, it is a complete and utter miss.

An American knockoff of Love Actually, Valentine’s Day was written by Katherine Fugate (creator of the Lifetime soap Army Wives) and directed by Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman). The film stars a litany of well known actors in a series of storylines set in L.A. and revolving around the titular holiday. The whole thing feels like someone threw together a bunch of half-formed ideas from the cookie cutter bin of rom-com concepts because they couldn’t flesh them out into feature length.

Ashton Kutcher is the central character, a florist who gets dumped by his fiancée, Jessica Alba. His best friend, Jennifer Garner, is dating a doctor (Patrick Dempsey), who turns out to be married. Jessica Biel is a sports agent who bonds with Jamie Foxx, a news reporter, over their mutual distaste for Valentine’s Day. Topher Grace works as a mail room clerk in Biel’s office and begins dating the receptionist, Anne Hathaway, who secretly doubles as a phone sex operator. Julia Roberts is an Army captain who shares a plane seat with Bradley Cooper.

The over bloated cast also includes: Julia’s niece Emma, Hector Elizondo, Shirley MacLaine, Queen Latifah, Eric Dane, Kathy Bates, and Joe Mantegna.

The Taylors, Lautner and Swift, also appear as a couple of high schoolers in love. They’re good-looking, bubbly, and empty headed. That pretty much sums up the entire movie. Everybody in the movie is hot, rich, and somehow keep managing to bump into each other. The interconnected contrivances are a lot like Crash, except with romance instead of racism. They all live in some fantasy world version of Los Angeles completely lacking in traffic, crime, or racial diversity. In Valentine’s Day, the only Mexican in L.A. is George Lopez.

Rating: *

Duplicity

Duplicity - Dir. Tony Gilroy (2009)


Michael Clayton was on my top ten list of best films for 2007. It’s a movie that gets better with each viewing. I was looking forward to writer/director Tony Gilroy’s follow-up though I was taken aback by the first trailer. I thought it was going to be a dark thriller cut from the same cloth as Clayton, instead it was a frothy Ocean’s Eleven-type film. Duplicity is part romantic comedy, part heist film and tries to be a little too clever for its own good.

Clive Owen is MI-6 agent, Ray Koval, who picks up a beautiful woman at the US Consulate in Dubai. That woman turns out to be Claire Stenwick, a CIA agent who drugs Ray and steals secret documents from him. They run into each other years later, now working on rival sides of a corporate espionage death match. Claire works for Burkett-Randall, headed up by CEO Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson), while Ray is part of a security team for Equikrom under the auspices of CEO Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti). Both corporations have been trying to steal sensitive information for each other and it only intensifies when Tully announces he is ready to roll out a revolutionary new product. We learn Claire is actually working as a mole for Equikrom and, not only that, she and Ray are looking to double-cross everybody to cash in on the secret product for themselves. That’s only the beginning of the twists and turns of Duplicity.

I’m all for twisty storylines as long as they are properly set up and make sense. Gilroy doesn’t so much set us up as he drops the twists right into our laps. It’s difficult to become invested in the plot when the rug keeps getting pulled from under us. The true appeal of the film is watching the movie stars act like movie stars. Clive Owen is always in a well-tailored suit and Julia Roberts (at 41) looks the best in her career and shows cleavage on an Erin Brockovich level. They meet each other for clandestine affairs in Rome, the Bahamas, and even Cleveland (where Owen has a funny dialogue about frozen pizza). Gilroy goes for a classic Hollywood feel to their relationship, something on par with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Though they have chemistry, they aren’t lighting up the screen as much as you’d want.

Duplicity begins on a high note with some clever use of split-screens and a slow motion slap fest between Wilkinson and Giamatti. The rest of the film doesn’t live up to the promise shown by the excellent opening sequences. It’s worth a rent if you’re in the mood for some lightweight fluff.

Rating: ** 1/2

Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War - Dir. Mike Nichols (2007)

Puff piece on world history with a crackling, whip-smart script from Aaron Sorkin.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman is hilarious in his supporting role.

Needs more Amy Adams. Then again, what doesn't?