Movie Review: Aloha

Aloha

Directed by Cameron Crowe

In theatres

Cameron Crowe became famous at sixteen when he toured with The Allman Brothers Band and his story made the cover of Rolling Stone.

While still in his teens he interviewed everyone from Bob Dylan to Led Zeppelin.

His writing shared space in magazines with Lester Bangs, Joe Klein, Joe Eszterhas, P. J. O'Rourke, and Hunter S. Thompson.

The first film he wrote was Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

The first film he directed was Say Anything.

He wrote and directed Almost Famous, Singles, Jerry McGuire, and Vanilla Sky.

His films have been nominated for Oscars and are much loved by a wide swath of humanity.

His films are quoted in other people's films.

How many times have you heard someone say, "You had me at…" over the past 19 years?

My point, if I can find one here, is that this is a guy of some import, an artist of some note, a cultural figure with some serious wins in his wins column.

A guy whose work has moved people, has inspired people, has made us laugh and has made us cry.

And now he will be known as the guy who cast the very non-Asian Emma Stone as an Asian.

Yes, the Arizona-born, western European descended Emma Stone plays the Chinese/Hawaiian/Swedish Allison Ng.

To accept something like this, an alabaster skinned, green-eyed, blonde and freckled actress playing a character who would most certainly not be at least two of those things, takes some mental gymnastics that I'm way too out of shape to try.

I might have attempted some suspension of disbelief if maybe the script didn't hit the audience over the head with her ancestry every few minutes, making her a weird hybrid of love interest and exposition dump.

Allison Ng knows all there is to know about Hawaiian spirituality and traditional culture, is an expert on Hula dancing and can pick up a guitar and jam with a group of native Hawaiians.

We're not talking a situation where the characters ancestry or gender or whatever is secondary to the character, like Johnny Storm being played by Michael B. Jordan or Watson being played by Lucy Liu.

Allison Ng's heritage is very important to the movie, and the script makes a point of commenting on her heritage every damn chance it can.

So why not cast an actress that is actually, I don't know, part-Asian?

Is Olivia Munn too busy?

Or downplay the Asian heritage?

Or just re-write the damn character?

And why, oh why, is the casting of the very non-Asian Emma Stone as an Asian the least of this movie's problems?

Bradley Cooper plays Brian Gilcrest, who used to work in Hawaii for NASA in some vague, never ever detailed manner, and then went onto to work for the Richest Guy In The World as some sort of contractor and then got Badly Injured in Afghanistan and is now back in Hawaii because a gate at a military base is being moved.

Really.

At the beginning of the movie he has sold his soul to the highest bidder and is cynical and detached.

How do we know this?

Because someone shows him a picture of their newborn and he looks bored.

That's it.

It's not in the performance.

Bradley Cooper is horribly miscast here.

If it wasn't for everyone else commenting on him selling out and having no soul and calling him cynical and detached, Brian Gilcrest would have just been another charming, ridiculously handsome Bradley Cooper character.

All the character notes are in the dialogue, it's all tell with no show.

And that is just one of the problems with the script.

Cameron Crowe used to have a real flair for natural sounding dialogue, stuff that sounded like what people that are cooler than me would say.

It was distinctive, it had a rhythm and it sounded great when people like Jason Lee, Tom Cruise or Kate Hudson said it.

The dialogue in Aloha swings from horribly handled exposition to lessons on Hawaiian culture and traditions to bizarre, almost surreal moments that reminded me of the train scene in The Manchurian Candidate, when Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh first meet, just without the mystery or charm.

And sometimes it's just dull.

Aloha is a very bad film.

A bad, bad, bad, bad film.

It's not a good-bad, or car-accident-bad or even so-bad-it's-good.

It is just bad.

The studio is marketing it as some kind of comedy, the trailers making it look like some kind of romantic comedy that guys would enjoy.

It's none of those things.

If it's supposed to be a comedy, it fails miserably.

The one and only laugh-out-loud moment comes about 90 minutes in.

If it's supposed to be some kind of romance, it fails.

Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone have quite close to zero chemistry together.

The age difference between the two is is uncomfortably apparent.

And whatever chemistry Bradley Cooper and Rachel McAdams had in Wedding Crashers has dissipated like several of the plot threads of Aloha.

The performances in this thing are, for the most part, serviceable.

That's as good as it gets here.

Emma Stone goes from hard ass to peppy to the kinda crazy you back away from while fumbling for your phone in your pocket.

Bradley Cooper is bland, still ridiculously handsome and charming, but still bland.

Rachel McAdams looks pretty but is just relegated to the ex-girlfriend who complains about her husband to her ex-boyfriend.

The ex-boyfriend that she hasn't seen in thirteen years.

Danny McBride is kinda funny but mostly distracting because he is always moving his hands and wiggling his fingers.

Because his character's nickname is Fingers.

So, I guess he has to wave his hands around a lot.

Bill Murray flies in from some other movie where drinks are being served and reminds everyone that he was in two Garfield movies.

John Krasinski is the strong silent type and makes that work for him for the most part.

Alec Baldwin yells.

The plot is a complete mess.

There's the gate I mentioned before and a satellite with a secret nuclear payload and some negotiating for the movement of the gate and promises that the satellite won't have a secret nuclear payload.

And when I say gate, I mean a gate.

Like, when you drive up to a place that has a security shack and a gate that has to be lifted to allow you entry.

I saw a movie with a central plot point being a gate.

By the time the satellite is sabotaged by sound and for some reason beams back images I had given up on finding anything good in this thing.

But the final scene is kinda touching and heartfelt.

And I enjoyed the soundtrack.

And that's all I can really say about Aloha without this just degenerating into thousands of swears and cursing and vileness.

Last time I ask Devon to help me decide which movie I should see… Thanks, Devon.

So, yeah.

Don't believe the trailers.

Aloha is not Bradley Cooper's return to comedy.

Aloha is bad.

Don't waste your money or your time on it.

In fact, if it comes on TV some late night just change the channel.

Maybe Jerry McGuire will be on.

Or Singles.