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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 09/07/2011 : 17:54:30
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This is the 2nd time Hanks and Roberts have paired off - the first was Charlie Wilson's War. It's an interesting comparison because that film was very much about the power games people play, while this is much more wysiwyg.
Okay it's not a great movie, and it's far from Hanks at his rom-com best. But the critics really seem too eager to shove the shiv into his ribs and deflate him like a party balloon. Life's no party, Hanks, they scream.
Whoa up there, guys, he never said he was making a socio-political tract. I agree, that in an era when Joe and Josephine Bloggs are looking over their shoulder to see if they're gonna get downsized, Larry Crowne appears to skip the phases of angst and loss after a divorce and getting fired.
He skips right on over to makeover -- determined to look up, up, up. Every day in every way he's going to be better and better. Hell, sure he'll just walk away from his workplace/lifeplace imbalance. Those cute kids on scooters look like their having fun. Mebbe he can join in.
He's taking courses at a local community college. Which is where he meets his scooter connection - a curly girl - with bf - who knows how to re-dress him and feng sui his apartment. She also knows he's mightily attracted to the lack lustre teacher of Speaking, one Ms Julia Roberts.
And that's where the rom comes in.
I dunno - whenever Hanks has to play the ordinary guy he scrabbles about the IQ scale. When it's Gump-obvious he's great. When it's intelligent and devious as in Road to Perdition he fills those shoes. But here, as a working guy who's not been intellectually challenged, he wavers. And, since he co-wrote and directed the script, you'd think he would have a better handle on a character who will eventually get the girl -- the girl who can believably teach Shakespeare.
It's never really bad, even though it's never really good. But it's certainly watchable and full of a cheesy charm.
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Larry Crowne
