Review of Aloha (2015) by Manny C — 03 Jun 2015

Boy, has any movie in recent memory suffered as toxic a reputation as Cameron Crowe's Aloha, a Hawaii-set rom com that isn't as awful as some would have you believe. The wonderful writer-director of Say Anything..., Singles, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous (for which he won a screenplay Oscar) has been pilloried by leaked e-mails that revealed studio disgruntlement with the film and a rash of bad press over the casting of Emma Stone as an Asian-American and accusations of whitewashing Hawaii. Valid points, which is unfortunate for Aloha, a movie that attempts to take down the military-industrial complex, epitomized in the movie by Alec Baldwin and Bill Murray, an industry that disenfranchises and exploits the natives by using its lands and air space for profit and worse.

To put it bluntly: Aloha is a hot mess, a mess of plots struggling to find a unifying tone that never gels. Bradley Cooper is Brian Gilcrest, a combat-scarred defense contractor in Honolulu to try and reconnect with the space program. He'd also like to reconnect with former flame Tracy (Rachel McAdams), but she's now married and a mother with pilot Woody (John Krasinski). Enter Allison Ng (Emma Stone), Brian Air Force handler who annoys him with her constant 'warmest alohas' until he sees her true self, which is an adamant defender of native Hawaiians against the exploitation of Brians employer, Carson Welch (Murray), a defense fat cat looking to militarize Hawaii's air space by launching a weapons satellite.

It's a wonderful cast, but Cooper is practically sleepwalking while Stone is giving her all, reminiscent of Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst in Crowe's tepid Elizabethtown. McAdams manages to find a groove between playing it for real and playing it for laughs. And as much of a joy Murray is to watch (particularly when he's getting down to Hall and Oates) his delivery feels forced when things take a darker turn.

Crowe is taking cues from his mentor Billy Wilder by turning a derisive eye to a postwar world and the black markets that spring in their wake, much like Wilder's 1948 A Foreign Affair, set in postwar Berlin. But Wilder was a master of acid wit, Crowe has no flair for cynicism. He has more a desire to tidy things up and let the good guys win. Aloha sparks a fire but quickly runs away. Shame.