She’s abrupt and uptight and all business-until she isn’t, suddenly. Woody and Tracy now have two kids together and a seemingly happy life-until they don’t, suddenly.īrian’s escort and minder while on the base is Emma Stone’s Captain Ng. Why him, of all people? Doesn’t matter.Ĭonveniently, the pilot who flies him there, the stoic Woody ( John Krasinski), happens to be married to Brian’s former girlfriend, Tracy ( Rachel McAdams), the one who got away. He now works for billionaire private defense contractor Carson Welch ( Bill Murray), which requires him to return to his former Air Force base in Hawaii-something to do with launching a satellite AND helping gain the native Hawaiians’ blessing for a new pedestrian gate. In the process, he meets a perky and quirky young blonde who sees the innate good in this flawed creature and aggressively makes it her mission to make him happy again.īradley Cooper is the Orlando Bloom figure in the equation and Emma Stone is his Kirsten Dunst-his manic pixie dream girl, if you will, since “Elizabethtown” is the film that inspired that phrase.Ĭooper stars as Brian Gilcrest, whose job is a little vague, but it seems he’s a former military man who nearly died in a missile attack in Afghanistan. It features a man who’s hit bottom, personally and professionally, who must return to his home of sorts to right some wrongs. So much here is so similar to Crowe’s 2005 film, which previously had been considered his least successful. And the dialogue itself-the thing Crowe made his name on in his great, early films “Say Anything …,” “ Jerry Maguire” and “ Almost Famous”-so frequently strains for his signature poignancy that it feels like a parody of a Crowe script.įor all its needless complications, “Aloha” can be summed up simply: It’s “ Elizabethtown,” in Hawaii. It’s obvious in big developments that make you go: “Huh?” but also within individual scenes, with cutaways to different camera angles that disrupt the flow of dialogue. You can see the editing, and not in a good way.

As it stands now, “Aloha” feels like several films at once, crammed together and sped up, with results that are emotionally hollow and narratively confusing.

This is the rare Crowe film that could stand to be a little longer, that could use some more development in its characters and breathing room in their relationships. Even if you didn’t know any of that going into the film, though, the sensation of tinkering and re-tinkering would be inescapable.

Radio Nowhere by Lee Beard