I was catfished by Cameron Crowe.
I believed the trailer. I was completely expecting to walk into the theater and be treated to some laughs, some love, and maybe – just maybe — learn a little along the way.
The trailer, as it turns out, is a blatant misrepresentation of the film. The uproarious comedic scenes we’re promised? Not present. The romantic storyline that supposedly changes lives and hearts? Unconvincing. And two of the film’s biggest draws, Bill Murray and Alec Baldwin, have roughly 10 minutes of screen time between them.
The only thing I learned from this movie was that I’m a patient woman.
We open on a panoramic view of the night’s sky as the voice of military contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) drowns us in a sea of exposition. Cooper has returned to Hawaii, land of his innumerable military successes, to convince the King (a title that was never sufficiently explained) to bless a gate. If somehow you manage to make it past this point, I am sad to say it fails to get any better.
Cooper’s character is set up to make a lot of hard choices. Does he love the manic pixie dream girl, Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone), or the one that got away, Tracy (Rachel McAdams)? Does he help the morally bankrupt billionaire Carson Welch (Bill Murray) launch a weaponized satellite over the island? Or does he play savior to the Hawaiian people and stop Murray’s evil deeds?
Trying to make sense of this film and describe it in concrete terms is difficult when the writer/director himself couldn’t make any sense of it. The film had originally been set to star Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon, but both had to leave due to scheduling issues. For four years Cameron Crowe supposedly tweaked and worked on the movie to improve it.
But as we know via the big Sony Hack, even Sony executives thought the movie was a disaster. Sony Chairman Amy Pascal wrote, “Cameron never really changed anything… The satellite makes no sense… The gate makes no sense.”
I’d have to agree with Ms. Pascal.
There was further controversy surrounding the release of this film from native Hawaiians. The world Aloha is a sacred word in their culture, which is broken down into alo: presence/sharing and ha: breath/essence of life. The film does nothing to celebrate Hawaiian culture, frequently referring to indigenous beliefs dismissively as myths or ghost stories. The cast is made up almost entirely of white people who appropriate the language and belief system when it suits them. Stone and Cooper are set up as the saviors of the island, while the King, who wears a shirt throughout the movie that says Native Hawaiian, sells access to valuable land for two mountains and cell phone service.
Aloha is a film that tries hard to have heart, but stops vastly short of its goal. I watched Crowe’s Almost Famous before going to see Aloha. That film reminded me of just how brilliant he can be. Aloha tries to recapture the magic of that film and Jerry Maguire, but it’s as if Crowe’s trying to force lightning to strike again, rather than letting it occur naturally.
The result of this heavy-handedness is a group of otherwise talented actors struggling to bring life to dead words and flat characters. While some, like Baldwin (as the blustery General Dixon), manage to overcome the melodramatic script, the others are left to flounder. If I’d been given a dollar for every slow shot of a longing gaze, I’d have enough money to go to the bar and forget this movie.
Aloha. Opening Friday May 29 at area theaters. Written and directed by Cameron Crowe. Rated PG-13. Starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, and Alec Baldwin.
CL Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2015.
