'Aloha' - Movie Review

Bradley Cooper plays Brian Gilcrest, an ex-soldier and former high-end contractor severely injured and effectively demoted, now returning to Hawaii to arrange a proper Hawaiian blessing for a pedestrian gate at a new space centre. He has to deal with his military assignee Allison Ng (Emma Stone), his old buddy "Woody" (John Krasinski) who's now married to the ex-girlfriend he shouldn't have given up (Rachel McAdams), and his billionaire boss Carson Welch (Bill Murray). Not a great start, but not necessarily a bad one either. But then you have to mix in Crowe's love of over-the-top dialogue (he's used this to some success in the past - "Jerry McGuire" being a prime example - but it's just bad here) and a huge dose of really misplaced Hawaiian religion and mysticism, and you get a movie every bit as bad as the critics said it was.

Cooper and Stone do their best with the material, but there's not really any hope for it. The subtitling of the Manly Silence later in the movie was brilliantly funny and at least gave us some good comedy, but didn't aid in saving a movie already short on drama.

My response was to go re-watch Crowe's "Almost Famous," which I still consider to be among the best movies ever made.