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Bradley Cooper won’t be headed back to the Oscars for his role in Aloha
C+Watch some parts of Aloha and it’s easy to see how writer/director Cameron Crowe could create movies like Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. Watch the entire movie, however, and it’s easy to see how he’s become largely irrelevant in Hollywood in the last decade.
Actually, Crowe has been working on Aloha for nearly a decade through numerous cast and script changes. The finished product bears the mark of a project that’s been circulating since the Bush presidency. Brian Gilcrist (Bradley Cooper), a former Air Force whiz turned civilian contractor, is in Hawaii for a PR job that consists primarily of schmoozing some native Hawaiians into going along with a project that will allow billionaire Carson Welch (Bill Murray) to launch satellites into space from the island. The job also allows Brian to reconnect with former girlfriend Tracy Woodside (Rachel McAdams), now married to an Air Force officer (John Krasinski). Brian also makes some new connections with his Air Force liaison, Allison Ng (Emma Stone).
Aloha bears the mark of a much longer film that was hastily edited down to a 105-minute running time. Key plot elements are unexplained or poorly explained, and characters’ personalities seem to change drastically from scene to scene. Alec Baldwin has three scenes in the movie as the commanding Air Force general, and he seems like three different people. The result is an at-times incomprehensible mess. To make matters worse, Stone (who’s supposed to be one-quarter Hawaiian) and Murray are badly miscast. However, Aloha is a mess with a lot of wonderful individual scenes such as Stone dancing with Murray or making music with some of the native Hawaiians. Cooper exudes his patented charm in several scenes with both Stone and McAdams, although he admittedly appears lost and befuddled in others. And even a miscast Bill Murray is fun to watch. All in all, about half of the movie consists of anywhere from good to almost magical scenes, including a great closing moment. Aloha is a movie that will be best enjoyed on video with the fast forward button handy to speed viewers through the messy scenes and linger on the good ones.
Continue reading on Aloha: Mini-Review
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