Cameron Crowe has made a movie about a weary cynic who seeks a second chance and finds redemption in the arms of an idealistic lady. Actually he's made that movie several times; some of them, including Jerry Maguire, are quite good. His latest, Aloha, is not.
The cynic is Bradley Cooper's Brian Gilcrest, a once admirable military contractor now smiling through the task of doing dirty work for a shabby billionaire (Bill Murray). Gilcrest returns to his old Hawaiian haunts, ostensibly for some glad-handing PR duty, and encounters the idealistic lady (Emma Stone), a can-do Air Force captain with an emotional attachment to the island and its traditions (which are treated with a fair amount of respect). There's also a second woman, Gilcrest's old flame, played by Rachel McAdams.
Crowe was once the master of the rock 'n' roll screwball comedy. His movies were sentimental but smart, driven by a gift of gab and a knack for the emotional crescendo. But he's been going through the motions for the past several years, and Aloha, for all its spasms of charm, feels like a push-button romance, its heroes glibly spouting lines with the hope that the words come to mean something.
Occasionally they do. It's easy to buy Cooper as a man of potential who decided to cash in, and we get some glimmer and spark as Stone's Capt. Allison Ng tries to crack through his glib shell. The main problem is that the rest of the movie is just as glib. The big speeches and gestures start flowing before we've even come to know the people giving them. Aloha is Crowe at his most floridly cute, right down to the precocious little kid who finds hope in the infinite wonder of outer space.
The most human touches come from the supporting players, the scene-stealers not tasked with the responsibility of carrying thinly sketched character arcs. Chief among these is Danny McBride as a go-along-to-get-along colonel who can't stop waving and flexing his fingers the air, a nervous tic that has morphed into what passes here as a defining trait.
Aloha is so aggressively pleased with itself from the start that it never bothers to earn its big emotional payoff. The results are tinny and too easy, forced whimsy masquerading as firm convictions and deep thoughts.
ALOHA (C)
Directed by Cameron Crowe. PG-13 (some language including suggestive comments). 105 mins. In wide release.
