Imagine if you will that you suddenly found yourself desperately short of time, required by some inexplicable deadline to watch all the films of Cameron Crowe’s oft-charming, many times insightful cinematic output and report on it in the shortest time possible.
What would you do? What would you do …
Would you Google like a rabid cinephile hoping you’d stumble across someone’s definitive crib sheet on the director’s films which include such greats as Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky and Jerry Maguire? Or would you dash to YouTube, hoping a dedicated film fan had cleverly edited many of his films into one of those jauntily-appealing greatest hits sets that so often beguile an internet population short on both attention and time?
Or would you simply buy a ticket to see Aloha, the director’s latest tale of love, loss and the alluring appeal of second chances?
If you choose door number 3, then prepare to be disappointed and never work in this town again, people.
This is not because Aloha is a terrible, cinema-breaking movie, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Heaven’s Gate (1980), Showgirls (1995) or Battlefield Earth (2000); it in fact contains some charming, if oddly out of sync performances, and the sort of delightful elements common to all Crowe’s films.
No, it’s largely because while it tick many of the boxes of a Crowe film – the broken hero who finds his/her past and present colliding to healing, though initially unsettling, effect, grand emotional statements worn very much on the sleeve, and a plucky prodigy who will not be denied to name but a few – it fails to assemble them in any kind of meaningful or ultimately enjoyable way.
It is a film desperately in need of a reason to be, an amalgamation of a romantic comedy (the inevitable meet cute, witty banter, the impromptu consummation of the unresolved sexual tension), a thriller (man discovers someone is up to no good and does his best to thwart it) and a mature relationship drama (old lovers meet, the bones of dead romantic love are exhumed, meaningful conversations are had) that never really fires.
Perhaps Crowe simply got too ambitious – he is both the screenwriter and the director on this film in keeping with his usual practice of being a cinematic jack-of-all-trades – and tried to cram too much, including oddly-inserted references to Hawaiian mythology that feel more tacked on than anything, into one half-baked movie.
Or maybe he spent one weekend indulgently re-watching all his old films and inadvertently channelled them all into Aloha, failing to take the best bits along with him?
Whatever the problem, Aloha bristles with all manner of plot developments that seemingly come out of nowhere, largely unheralded, many ill-prepared, which vanish before they are even fully-formed or satisfyingly worked out.
The central storyline itself is relatively straightforward.
A one time military show pony now disgraced contractor, Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) returns to Hawaii, scene of his greatest career triumphs and home to his once-devoted girlfriend Tracy Woodside (Rachel McAdams) who is now possibly happily married to the near-wordless Woody (John Krasinski) with whom she has two adorable, preternaturally emotionally-gifted children 13 year old Grace (Danielle Rose Russell) and 9 year old auteur-in-waiting Mitchell (Jaeden Lieberher) to help offbeat but ruthless billionaire Carson Welch launch a satellite into space.
Teamed with irrepressibly enthusiastic Air Force Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone), who never fails to remind everyone around her that she is one quarter Hawaiian, he soon finds out that his time on the island will be more complicated and extensive than he ever imagined.
Ripe with all kinds of dramatic possibility you would think, even if it sounds like a plot line from film making 101, something you would usually not accuse Crowe of pursuing in any way.
Alas, while Cooper, Stone and McAdams largely acquit themselves well, their characters strike some oddly discordant notes as if they’re going through the motions with no real idea of why they’re doing it.
To say that everyone phoned it in would be a critical bridge too far; in and of themselves the characters have some appealing aspects (and some of the lines of dialogue actually manage to sparkle and amuse), even if we have seen their like many times before, and the narrative does tug at the heartstrings once or twice quite successfully.
But by and large, this is a film populated by plot developments that don’t congeal, ideas that never really seem to reach their full maturity before being snatched away (or arrive so suddenly you don’t even see them approaching), characters who suddenly fall in love just like that or change the entire course of their life for reasons that don’t ring true, and big “M” messages such as the dangers of weaponising space or trampling on indigenous rights that don’t receive the kind of exposure or articulation they deserve.
You could use Aloha as a highlights reel of sorts for Crowe but frankly that would be doing the man himself a grave disservice; he has done much better than this before, and likely, after some time to lick his critical wounds, will again.
Best to pretend Aloha never happened and move on, or in the case of the moviegoing public, never go there in the first place.