This is no Sleepless in Seattle. Tom Hanks returns to chick flicks in a movie he is willing to admit he co-wrote, produced and directed. It will not do well at the box office but it is harmless entertainment. Here is my longest review of the year:
Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Bryan Cranston) – Two of the nation’s most bankable superstars come together again (Charlie Wilson’s War) in a marginal chick flick with a thin script. Thank goodness they did because, without them in it, we might have been subjected to Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Garner. Tom Hanks wrote the script (four years in the writing) along with Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, My Life in Ruins). It was Hanks’ wife, actress Rita Wilson (who plays bank official Wilma Q. Gammelgaard in the film), who saw Vardalos in the stage version of Greek Wedding and brought it to Hanks’ Playtone production company. As a writer, Hanks’ film resume is a little thin (That Thing You Do) and it shows here. We all love Hanks as an actor whether he is being funny, loving, serious, or everyman. He is also the director of Larry Crowne. Again, his resume also is stronger on TV (Band of Brothers, From the Earth to the Moon) than it is in films (That Thing You Do). Larry Crowne plays more like a TV show than a movie. It doesn’t flow like a movie. It contains a bunch of scenes that are designed to take you from commercial to commercial unlike a movie that should flow without needing an artificial break. Many writers and directors make this mistake, and Hanks is a superstar actor and producer, not a writer and director
Then, there is Julia, who plays against type right up until the end when she gets to flash her trademark smile in the last scene. Otherwise, she is the almost unlikeable Erin Brockovich (for which she won an Oscar). She plays Mercy Tainot (pronounced TA’ no), a community college teacher who drinks too much and who lives in a bad marriage with a porn-surfing slacker (Bryan Cranston in a totally meaningless role). The biggest female movie star in the world, Julia saves the film, giving us a reason to keep watching.
OK, here is the story. Larry is a sweet guy who works at UMart, a big box store where he is well loved by his co-workers and has been chosen Employee of the Month eight times already. He is called in and promptly laid off. THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN. The guy is age-protected (he is in his 50s); he is an exceptional performer (what a lawsuit this will make!); and he is told that he is terminated for not having gone to college (but they HIRED him and he works in UMart as a sales associate, not exactly requiring a philosophy degree). All right, I’ll buy the premise in order to watch Hanks and Roberts.
Larry, who is divorced and bought his ex-wife’s portion of his dream house in a neighborhood featuring a never-ending yard sale at the home of a couple, Lamar and B’Ella, played by Cedric the Entertainer and Oscar nominee Taraji B. Henson. Seriously! They are great friends in a ridiculous sitcom. But they are fun, mainly because Lamar loves to negotiate prices for the crap he sells. Henson is, well, wasted.
Larry decides that he better go to college in order to get the degree he needs to get a job. Really? The eight-time Employee of the Month at UMart couldn’t land another job at Home Depot or Toys R Us or somewhere else? Instead, he takes money he doesn’t have (he has to allow his house to be foreclosed) and enrolls in Mrs. Tainot’s (yes, she prefers Mrs.) communications class as well as Dr. Matsutani’s (Star Trek’s George Takei) dry economics class (where Larry apparently is the class genius).
Do we have enough characters yet? No way. Some hip biker chick, Talia (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw – seriously, Gugu!), befriends our 50+ Larry (really?), who now drives a scooter instead of his expensive SUV. She brings him into the sweetest group of bikers ever concocted. Larry hangs with the scooter gang. Out riding one night with Talia, he conveniently runs into Mercy, who has demanded that her husband let her out of the car (in the middle of the night on a city street in Southern California) when he tells her her boobs are too! Mercy, mercy me!
The rest is predictable. Somehow, Mercy falls for Larry. They kiss. She is drunk. She invites him in. Does he go? There is the obligatory scene with the teacher in sunglasses at 8 the next morning talking to Larry about the night before. Then, as in all chick flicks, bad things happen followed by good things that happen. Help me!
You would think I hated this movie, but I didn’t. It had Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts as well as other very recognizable actors. I was never bored – perplexed and disappointed perhaps – and the movie didn’t put me to sleep. But Tom, really! Call Nora Ephron. SHE can write a romantic comedy. Then call Julia or Meg Ryan and do an adult chick flick. Or go back to producing great series or movies like The Pacific or do another Charlie Wilson’s War or Angels and Demons sequel. Don’t waste your considerable talent.