(Should‘ve just tested out of that class, dude….)
CAST: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Cedric The Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wilmer Valderama.
DIRECTOR: Tom Hanks
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and one really mundane speech class - straight ahead…
IT’S LIKE THIS: Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) is one of those perpetually cheerful store managers you see when you’re out shopping. You know… the kind that dotes and waits on you as if his life depends on it (or as if he’s heard that you give killer head). And given that Larry has won Employee of The Month a dozen times, or something, that may not be too far from the truth. He lives for his job, this guy. Unfortunately, his world gets turned upside down when he is let go from his position for, ahem, not having a higher education. As if stocking shelves and grinning like an imbecile and saying “Have a nice day! Come again!” requires a college diploma. Please. Anyhow, at the urging of his nutty best pal Lamar (Cedric The Entertainer), Larry decides to make up for this scholastic deficiency by taking classes at the local community college. It’s not Yale, but it’s a start. Soon, he finds himself in a speech class taught by Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts), a chick who basically hates her job and possibly her students even more. I don’t have to tell you that Larry is pretty much like a seal in the Great White Shark's lair with this chick. Best of luck, Larry…
THE DUDE (OR DUDETTE) MOST LIKELY TO SAVE THE DAY: Larry’s foxy (and much, much younger) classmate Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who’s wise and profound in a blatantly Movie Character way. In other words, she doesn’t exist in the real world.
EYE CANDY MOST LIKELY TO FIRE UP A WOODY: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are cute, but this award goes to Wilmer Valderama as Dell, Talia’s brooding boyfriend who sees Larry as a rival. I have no idea why. Because Tom Hanks is no Wilmer Valderama, folks…
MOST INTENTIONALLY EXCITING SCENE: Larry’s final speech. Probably one of the few good points of this film.
MOST UNINTENTIONALLY EXCITING SCENE: When the movie finally ended. I was ecstatic…
HOTTEST SCENE: Anytime Dell smolders into the view of the camera. Rock that goatee, Wilmer!
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: Will one rinky-dink speech class give Larry the education he needs? Or is this just the beginning of an uphill slog? Will Mercedes ever warm to him and his sunny attitude? Or will she continue to put blended margaritas and hangovers before him and the rest of her class? Does Talia have a crush on Larry? Or is she just trying to make him over in a (futile) effort to make him look like less of a dork? If so, then why does she insist he join her gang of… scooter-riders? Isn’t that against the tenets of coolness? What do they call themselves? The Purgatory’s Angels?
WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH “LARRY CROWNE”: If you are super-loyal to either Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts. You may find this a pleasant diversion.
WHY YOU MAY NOT ENJOY “LARRY CROWNE”: If your regard for Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts isn’t that strong. If so, you may check out of this film around the halfway mark…
BUT, SERIOUSLY: There’s a germ of a great idea at the heart of LARRY CROWNE - a middle-aged man has to go back to school to re-invent himself and get back on his feet at the same time. This was tackled to humorous, wacky effect in Rodney Dangerfield’s 1985 classic, BACK TO SCHOOL, wherein Dangerfield’s aging tycoon goes back to college to spend quality time with his freshman son. Think of LARRY CROWNE as a more low-key take on that very same idea. And therein lies LARRY CROWNE’s problem: it’s too low-key.
Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are, as usual, solid and more than competent. However, they are playing a couple of characters that aren’t very interesting. Beyond a generally amiable air and bland sincerity, there isn’t much to Larry Crowne. If you’re going to name a movie after the main character, you better be sure that he/she is a compelling figure. You felt that way about JERRY MAGUIRE and BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY - the protagonists of those films more than warranted their titular status. Not so with Larry Crowne. The guy is just, well, dull. And Hanks’ vanilla, predictable performance further exacerbates the situation.
Anyone who reads this blog, knows I adore Julia Roberts. However, her performance here isn’t one of my favorites. It’s not because Mercedes is an icy, distant, sometimes scary character. In fact, those are my favorite characters. I think they are the most fascinating ones - provided you can detect some of the complexity and tenderness underneath the ice. Here, Mercedes doesn’t have much dimension to her. And when her eventual “thawing” occurs, it’s not as exhilarating and heart-soaring as it should be - as it was for similarly closed-off Ice Princess characters like Marianne Graves (Goldie Hawn) in BIRD ON A WIRE, Kate Armstrong (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in NO RESERVATIONS, or Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) in THE PROPOSAL. In those movies, watching the leading men dismantle the coolly-controlled heroines’ defenses, one-by-one, was a joy to watch.
Not so in LARRY CROWNE, mainly because Mercedes just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort, and also because Larry never seems to be, well, interested enough. He basically looks upon Mercedes with the same genial regard he does everyone else. The result? A tepid connection between the Larry and Mercedes. Hanks and Roberts were much more effective and electric in CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR. Here, they are stuck with characters who are just not compatible with one another. It’s not enough that you have two actors with chemistry - the people they play must also click together. And Larry and Mercedes simply don’t. Which makes the happy ending all the more of a non-event.
Don’t get me wrong. LARRY CROWNE is not a bad movie, just an average one. I quite like the idea of a man going back to school and learning how to start his life over. That’s a fairly universal theme. But I firmly believe LARRY CROWNE could’ve been made a better film if several more rewrites of the script would’ve punched up the lead characters and made them more intriguing.
LARRY CROWNE might’ve also fared better, even with its lukewarm leads, if the supporting players were of any interest. But they seem more like writer’s constructs rather than actual human beings. Especially the other students in Larry’s class. I never once got the sense of these kids as real people. The most engaging players are Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson as Larry’s loyal friends, but they are not onscreen enough to make a big difference.
In the end, LARRY CROWNE is a decent effort to tell the story of a man starting over. It could’ve been a really good film. Unfortunately, because of two half-baked lead characters, it is merely an average one. And it pains me to write that.
