Aloha
Starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams and Bill Murray
Directed by Cameron Crowe (Jerry McGuire)
Rated PG-13 for some language including suggestive comments
In Cameron Crowe’s latest rom com, Bradley Cooper stars as a defense contractor hired by a billionaire (Murray) to obtain a blessing in his old stomping ground of Hawaii for approval of a large business deal. In the process he falls for a young captain (Stone) assigned to cart him around and revisits an old flame (McAdams) from his previous life on the island.
Throughout the years Crowe has proven to be a master of smart romantic comedies that stick with you long after the credits. He is known for displaying honesty and creating great moments from John Cusack holding a boom box over his head in Say Anything… to Tom Cruise’s iconic line in Jerry Maguire “you complete me.” His writing and directing is quirky while at the same time quite wonderful. Most of the time. Aloha is a complete miss. In fact, if I hadn’t known this was a Crowe film, I wouldn’t have believed it afterward.
The biggest problem with the film is the insane plot which doesn’t make a lick of sense. It’s something about getting a blessing from a Hawaiian king to launch a satellite for some sinister purpose that never gets fleshed out. The whole thing feels like an inside joke told from kids who think they are cool and want you to really want to know, but the joke isn’t funny and the kids are far from cool. They act like we should know the characters and the culture, but we don’t really know them and we don’t really want to either.
Then comes the bad character choices that lack any authenticity. For example, much ado is made about Cooper being the father of McAdams oldest child, and yet the person who has been playing dad for her entire life seems like more of an outsider in the equation than Cooper who has been gone for over a decade and newly introduced. Their decisions make the whole crew look shallow and weak.
The icing on this lousy piece of cake is the multitude of poor performances. I have really liked these actors in the past, and Bill Murray I’ll forgive simply because it’s him, but the acting here is so bad that it makes me question if any of these players are any good at their craft.
So it is with great disappointment that I have to throw this one under the bus. Sadly, San Andreas is not the only disaster movie hitting theaters this weekend. F