A movie for the 65-year old in all of us.

In all seriousness the film is pleasant enough, but only at a superficial level. Despite a good performance by Hanks, his character is never fully fleshed out into a believable human being. The same can be said for the community school students. It's as if screenwriters Hanks and Vardalos watched the tv show Community and completely ignored that what they're doing is satire, otherwise the show wouldn't be interesting. Larry Crowne's approach is earnest and that's what hurts the film. It also didn't help that Larry Crowne as a character has not one flaw to speak of. How is a flawless character supposed to be interesting or worth caring about? Hanks' charm can only go so far.

** (C)

A genial but thoroughly unremarkable comedy. Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are their affable selves and clearly had fun with each other making the film. However, Hanks the actor is let down by Hanks the director/screenwriter. As co-written with Nia "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" Vardalos, Larry Crowne is full of pleasant people saying pleasant things, but that's about the extent of its reach. C+

In interviews, Tom Hanks seems to be a friendly, warm, and intelligent man. His second film as director, Larry Crowne, is friendly and warm, a big bear hug of a movie, but the intelligence is often missing. Hanks plays the title character, a pleasant and mild-mannered man who spent two decades in the Navy and is on the other side of a nasty divorce. (I wonder why his wife, whom we never see, had a problem with him. At times his patience and relaxed charm are practically superhuman.) As the film opens, he's fired from his job at a Target-esque big-box store because, despite being Employee of the Month several times and an unwavering high spirit, he didn't go to college and will never be promoted. Adrift, he enrolls in a couple classes at a local community college, one taught by Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts), a boozy professor who is caught in a loveless marriage to a porn addict (Bryan Cranston). A hesitant affection begins to develop between she and Larry. He also joins a scooter club, lands a job in a diner, etc.

This is all as formless as it sounds. Hanks, who co-wrote the film with oh-she's-still-around? Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), has made a feature-length ode to affability, facing a bad economy and midlife woes with a smile and a can-do attitude, and the warm California sun. It's all small character beats and small jokes and small moments. Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson steal a few scenes as Larry's neighbors, a couple running a perpetual yard sale. George Takei is also dryly funny as an eccentric economics professor. (Strangely he's not involved with a Star Trek themed joke.) Gugu Mbatha-Raw is meant to steal scenes as a free-spirited student who invites Larry to join her scooter gang and gives him lessons in "cool" (new haircut and all). I found her annoying myself.

Hanks and Roberts play to their strengths, doing what '90s audiences loved seeing them do, but shaded with a bit of getting-older melancholy (not too much). I must say, though: both of their kisses are awkward and chemistry-free, as if you're watching two old pals having to smooch on command. Wait, you are. They don't hide it well.

Earlier this year a splendid movie with Will Ferrell and Rebecca Hall called Everything Must Go came out. Almost no one saw it, but trust me, it was a tough, poignant study of a just-fired alcoholic's midlife crisis and beginning steps toward renewal. Larry Crowne plays as Everything Must Go stripped of grit and reality. This is Getting Older in a Time of Recession pitched as light romantic comedy/fable. Which I guess is kind of lame, but Hanks and Roberts are compelling, it has a handful of big laughs, and I left pretty satisfied and amused, albeit uninspired.

B-

Random observations:

- Hanks seriously overdid the reaction shots during the third act's classroom scenes. Like Larry'll make some innocuous quasi-joke about syrup, and the hot lacrosse chick is all, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! I'M DYIN' HERE! YOU'RE SO FUCKING FUNNY, LARRY!

- For some reason, I kind of hated the scene where the pizza guy turns out to be the dude who fired Larry. It felt like it was from some different, broader movie.

"Hot lacrosse chick" was played by Grace Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter, btw. Random!

Ah, I can see the resemblance. She did remind me of Meryl's other daughter, the one who was in Evening and Off the Map.

Meryl has hot daughters.

I'm going to bump my grade for this down to the C range. I do appreciate, in a way, its sunniness and lightness and...Hanksiness, but it's all just a bit too dippy and shallow and drama-free and unrealistic to give a B- to. Too much of a pass. Hanks should've mustered more.

Larry Crowne is no Forrest Gump, but danged if wasn't the pleasantest little story I've seen in a dog's age.

If there had only been an effective backstory for the two leads, I could've believed in them... and perhaps even cared.

Sadly, I can only rate this:


5 out of 5.

Larry Crowne does a poor job working with a duet like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. The film doesn’t take any risks and everything just seems to happen. The scooter gang parts feel so out of place for a Hanks movie and makes it seem that they were trying so hard to please a college crowd with that. Now I do appreciate that this wasn’t a typical romance film where the feelings continuously build up, climax, and then get back together sort of thing. This was just a real disappointment. *1/2

Larry Crowne

In a word: crap. I just can't see what Tom Hanks was trying to say with this film. He wrote it, produced it, directed it and starred in it, and really he should have just walked away from it. It started out with promise; a man gets fired from his job and enrols at a community college, but then it just gets shit. He joins a scooter gang and eats at a diner, then gets a job at the diner and falls in love with his lecturer (Julia Roberts). It's all so crap.

And she's probably the world's worst lecturer too, she doesn't ever teach them anything. They just stand up and talk for 2 minutes and then it's over. That's not a class. I don't know what Tom Hanks was thinking making this tripe. Roberts is just a miserable bitch in most of the movie and Hanks is a washover who lets people turn him into a hip 20-year-old when he's in his 50s. Is it meant to be a comedy? Because it's certainly not funny. All of the college friends are lifeless and boring.

I don't get the classroom scene at the end where Crowne gets an "A+". Was his speech really that good. He got such an applause and I just couldn't understand it. In my opinion, it was pretty lame. He just talked about where he's visited in the Navy, then he tied it up with a quote from George Bernard Shaw (which was the actual topic he was meant to talk about). Is all of that really impressive? I'm sure any teenager could have done the same. It's such a shallow movie, void of any intelligence. Hanks seems intent of showing life as happy-go-lucky, but it isn't like that, and people watching this film will probably be turned off by its butterfly nature.

D-

In Hanks' defense, I do believe -he- believed he was producing a feel-good antidote for recession era America, but it is definitely a strange bird and very out of touch with any real economic anxiety.

This sounds harsher than intended, but this may be the most insignificant studio movie of the last five years. You have these two superstars joining forces to create a foolproof hit romantic summer comedy, and no one gave two shits.

Yeah, I remember Hanks came to the UK for promotion and he was on the Jonathan Ross show, and even Ross wasn't talking much about the movie. He said he liked it but panned it on his film show.

Yeah, this was just bad.