Thursday, June 30, 2011

Larry Crowne works as Tom Hank’s treatise on the world at large and his steadily changing place within it. Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks), the titular character, is over 50, baffled by text-messages and scooters, deeply effected by the downturn in the economy and the lack of jobs, and still wears his polo shirt tucked in to his pants like a cop. The film itself is simple and sweet, the story of a man and the life-altering effect of community college, youth and love but you can feel Hanks trying to make a bigger statement on the way as we get older we become rocks in the world’s quickly rushing stream. Everything is rushing towards us and we’re relegated to sit and stare and wait for erosion to take us away. Hanks isn’t an auteur and doesn’t try to do anything remarkably original in the film, but he manages through sheer charm and an ability to turn sap in to something just a bit more palatable, he makes an endearing movie far better than it should be.

Movie Review - Larry Crowne

Larry Crowne, "with an e", has just found out he’s been fired from his job as an employee at a massive Wal-Mart like chain, and being well in to middle age and lacking in a college education he is, as the kids say, fucked. No one well hire him and his mortgage has come knocking, and at some point in the near past his ex-wife has taken him for most of what he has. Enter community college and young, fresh faces and Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts) an embittered speech teacher who just might have a little life left in her. Hanks isn’t attempting anything new here, Larry Crowne is about an older man discovery a renaissance in his own life. The film is much like Tom Hanks persona, not jaw-droppingly gorgeous, but nice to look at and familiar in a way that draws you in, warms your belly and makes your face crease with smile. The film, to a fault, follows the beats of any film like this. I’m not giving anything away (nor did I once fear for a moment that anything truly bad might happen to any of our characters) to say that Larry Crowne, and all his many accomplices, end up happy and in the situations we always believed them to end up in. Oh yes, there’s a snappy hour and a half of film in there that draws a solid line from point A to point B, and it’s an enjoyable line at that, but we would not need to see any more of the film than the first and last fifteen minutes to figure out where exactly our friend Larry Crowne might end up.

Hanks, and his likeability, make the film work though. The characters, though loosely sketched or the most part, are drawn with enough quirk and charm to stand up on their own. Larry Crowne is a charming everyman and there is no better everyman living today than the great Tom Hanks. Without nary an ink drop of development, we know Larry, we know his background, we know he’s a good person, we know that whatever he’s doing, he’s trying to do it for the right reasons. Thus Julie Roberts Mercedes Tainot becomes a fantastic foil for Larry. Bitter, broken, hard on the drink - Mercedes Tainot and Larry Crowne have hit the same spots on the life wall, but each have approached them in different ways. The enjoyment of the entire film is watching Larry and Mercedes tip-toe through the obstacles of the modern world, in a incremental dance that draws them closer and closer. Perhaps this is what Hanks is trying to say with the film: life is a rushing river, and we just hapless creatures trying to hold on, but maybe, just maybe there is a way to draw one’s self out of the river and stand aside and enjoy the view.

- Noah Sanders -



Unless otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by John Laird under a Creative Commons License.