Review of Aloha (2015) by Tiffany M — 08 Jun 2015

ALMOST NAUSEOUS - My Review of ALOHA (2 Stars).

As a long-time Cameron Crowe fan, it pains me to report that his latest film, ALOHA, is more of a goodbye than a hello. Getting his start by adapting his novel to a hilarious screenplay for the 1982 classic, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, Crowe continued to impress with the indelible SAY ANYTHING, the terrific grunge-era SINGLES, the memorable JERRY MAGUIRE, and one of my favorite films of all time, ALMOST FAMOUS. Sure, he's stumbled, in my opinion, with VANILLA SKY and the truly terrible ELIZABETHTOWN, but his last film, WE BOUGHT A ZOO has its charms.

Now we have ALOHA, and I have to admit I spent more time trying to come up with a review title than I did remembering this painful, tone deaf, flat moviegoing experience. Some of the runner-ups included SAY NOTHING, SHOW ME THE UNFUNNY, and WE LEI'D AN EGG. I'm telling you, this is painful to write. The world needs Cameron Crowe now more than ever. He's part of the brigade that includes James L. Brooks and Alexander Payne, who strive to make humanist films in an endless sea of 3D Superheroes and interchangeable animated characters who somehow manage to merit their own individual bus stop ads. When dramas flop, it makes it that much harder for anymore to get made.

I WANTED this film to be great and yet what we got was either a Social Issue movie disguised as a Rom-Com or a Rom-Com disguised as a Social Issue movie. Either way, it plops right from the get-go. Bradley Cooper plays Brian Gilcrest, an injured war veteran who returns to Honolulu to negotiate for a privatized satellite company. His pre-existing relationship with a native Hawaiian leader, is the type of trust his billionaire boss, Carson Welch (Bill Murray) relies on in order to sneakily weaponize the sky. So Gilcrest is a liar and an all-around bad dude, whose redeeming quality is that he has the hots for Allison Ng (Emma Stone), a sharply saluting military lifer who has standards, morals, and an inexplicable lack of ethnicity. She represents the side of preserving the natural beauty and mysteries of the island. In a typical triangle, you would have another woman who leads Gilcrest in another direction on the issue. Instead, we get the totally unrelated storyline of his ex, Tracy Woodside (Rachel McAdams), who is now married to the strong, silent John (John Krasinski).

They exist to...to....I don't know...show us what a lump Brian has become? Ms. Ng already helps us out there. Perhaps they exist to show Brian what he REALLY wants out of life. Again, Ng to the rescue. So, this triad feels tacked on and not at all organic to the environmental/anti-war issues at hand.

As such, the movie is all over the place, lurching from one insubstantial scene to the next, back and forth between the romance and the bombs, allowing an endless array of music cues and dull montages to tell us how to feel. I did, however, love the use of Fleetwood Mac's TUSK-era "I Know I'm Not Wrong". Cameron Crowe has always had great taste in music, although using "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" as Alec Baldwin's Top Brass Theme Song is way too on-the-nose to work. Still, there's some good judgment here, but it doesn't make up for his total disconnect from his own material.

Quirky characters are introduced, such as the Woodside's camera-toting young son, but are given no real through-line. Worse yet, scenes are staged so poorly, with a handheld camera clumsily circling around our stars, suggesting a "let's just do everything in one quick take so we can go home early" quality. I can't fault cinematographer Eric Gautier, who has done wonderful work before with THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES and INTO THE WILD, so I'm going to guess that Crowe just didn't quite know how to pull together all of these disparate elements into a cohesive story.

It's sad, because there are some things that actually work. All of the actors deliver vivid, lived-in performances, adding that special Crowe-ian Spin to their line readings. Krasinski in particular is asked to do a LOT without dialogue, and despite it coming out of nowhere, one of those scenes is subtitled and is a source of temporary amusement. Every now and then, a character just blurts out how he/she feels, such as when Brian sees Allison in a new light and simply states, "Uh oh, I'm a goner" (or something to that effect). It's charming when done right, and Crowe has had more hits than misses with this technique.

When all is said and done, I just didn't care. I didn't care who ended up with whom, and I didn't care what happened to Bill Murray and his machinations. He may have wanted to put a bomb in space, but the only thing I'll remember from this fiasco is that Cameron Crowe put a bomb in movie theaters.