Larry Crowne
Let’s get this over with quickly. This movie is a contender for worst Hollywood movie ever, next to “Ramen Girl”. It’s not even in the category of the Chinese “What Women Wants” which is somewhat hollow and stupid, but so endearingly enjoyable that I could almost recommend it. In comparison to that, this film is pure idiocy.
I don’t care if the film is merely supposed to be a vehicle for Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts to have yet another major role, after all “What Women Wants” does exactly the same thing with Andy Lau and Gong Li. But at least they could have made a nice story out of it. Instead, we have a Julia Roberts whose major conflict with her husband is the fact that he likes porn (hello how many men do not?) Now that husband is being an idiot about it, but it feels so constructed that one could feel almost brainwashed into thinking that porn viewer = asshole. Then, Julia Roberts’s character teaches this amazingly stupid class in which she begins by demeaning her students. When they are clearly doing their best at giving speeches, she interrupts them mid-sentence rolling her eyes. What teacher does that? The film clearly shows how by the end of the course, everybody is giving good speeches (totally unrealistic but oh well), yet they all get B’s and C’s in the class which in the real world is obviously all A’s. Tom Hanks’s character makes a little bit more sense, but he is so oblivious about love you’d wonder how he ever got a woman. The biggest problem about his character is actually that girl Talia. Her character is so random and pointless, and her interactions with Tom Hanks’s character is so unrealistic that it makes me wonder if anybody on the cast has ever been a college student.
I don’t have any qualms about the film being bland, being typical Tom Hanks fare à la “nice guy in nice story”. The film just annoys me as a story in a similar way as Hanasaku Iroha’s work ethics did. I hope Tom Hanks will make better movies again.