It’s official: what movie stars crave above all is to be part of a community – not the back-stabbing world of Hollywood but an ordinary suburban community, where neighbours have yard sales and little kids zoom around on bikes in the background. Maybe that explains why Clint Eastwood did that stint as mayor of Carmel – and surely it explains why Tom Hanks co-wrote and directed Larry Crowne, and indeed plays the title-role. He even throws in a shot near the end of Larry posed with all his neighbours, and little kids zooming around on bikes in the background – though it doesn’t really work as a Kodak Moment, because we never really get to know these people.
How can we, with so many other people to get to know? There’s the gang at Larry’s public-speaking class at the local community college – the likeably brain-dead stoner dude, the girl who makes a speech about waffles, the black guy doing the “five dance steps every man should know”. There’s the gang at his Economics class, with a self-regarding professor played by George Takei of Star Trek fame. There’s the scooter gang, who really are a gang, though all they do is ride around on scooters. There’s the staff at Frank’s Diner, where everyone seems to hang out for reasons unknown. There’s Julia Roberts as the grumpy public-speaking prof and her loser husband, a failed writer who now mostly blogs and surfs Internet porn – though the ‘porn’ is just women in bikinis, whether to hold on to that ‘Suitable for All’ rating or to reassure us that nothing too terrible happens in Larry Crowne’s world.
The worst thing that happens is Larry losing his job, which is what sets him off on the world of adult education (his lack of a college degree is why he was made redundant). It’s a shame, because he’s happy at the company; we first see him in the parking lot, picking up someone else’s litter with the eagerness of an Eagle Scout. Larry (like Hanks) is a professional nice guy, which presumably explains why he’s adopted by the scooter gang – most of whom are half his age – and a free-spirited Economics classmate (played by British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who’s also scooter-girl-in-chief. “What do men see in these irritating free spirits?” grumbles Julia in between mixing herself unhappy-wife cocktails – and Roberts gives the standout performance, both because the actress’s overbearing energy has mellowed beautifully in middle age and because her character is nicely misanthropic in a film full of boring, goodwill-to-all-men cosiness.
Part of the problem, as already mentioned, is that Larry Crowne spreads its net too wide, so none of its rascals and harmless eccentrics really register. Another part is that Hanks has little sense of style as a director: the long dialogue scene between Roberts and her husband is incredibly flat, shot in monotonous back-and-forth like a TV soap. But the main problem is that the script – co-written with Nia Vardalos – is full of lame jokes. The scooter gang snap their fingers in unison, like the Jets in West Side Story, and they do it ironically but it’s still cringe-inducing (the whole idea of a scooter gang is lame; what self-respecting 20-something does this?). The stoner dude in the public-speaking class – which is more like verbal karaoke than a public-speaking class – is told to speak on Disraeli, and reckons that must be “a guy from Disrael”. There’s even a Star Trek gag, the ultimate cheap laugh.
Tom Hanks would say it doesn’t matter if the comedy falls flat. The real purpose of Larry Crowne is to offer a message of hope and togetherness: with recession biting hard in America, it says, now is the time for community and positive energy – everyone together, white and black, old and young. The generation gap disappears in times of crisis; the film has a certain middle-aged tut-tutting at Kids Today, with their Twitter and their Facebook, but Gugu and her mates adopt square, pasty Larry without a second thought (though she does try to make him more presentable). The film’s key moment is perhaps when Larry runs into one of his old colleagues from the company – a colleague who wasn’t very nice when Larry lost his job but is now himself unemployed, forced to work as a pizza-delivery boy – and our hero leaves him a tip with no hard feelings because hey, we’re all in this together. Some will say that makes Larry Crowne admirable. Others will say it’s all very well for movie stars to sing the praises of community, safe in their privileged Hollywood lifestyles. Others may simply wish that Larry Crowne were smarter, or funnier, or pricklier, or more imaginative. I’m in the last group.
