‘Aloha’ Had Emma Stone Apologizing and Nearly Got Cameron Crowe Canceled — But This Hawaii-Set Rom-Com Is Not Misbegotten, Just Misunderstood

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The ad wizards who wrote that copy were certainly onto something when they created this memorable tagline, but Decider’s “Take Two” series was specifically formulated in a laboratory by the world’s foremost pop culture scientists to provide a second chance for movies that made a less than stellar first impression upon their original release.

“I’m sorry!”, Emma Stone yelled across the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton with such force that the on-stage mic could pick up her cry. Stone was responding to a gentle ribbing by Golden Globes host Sandra Oh about her casting in 2015’s Aloha as an Asian character. But she might as well have been speaking about the lingering sentiment toward the film altogether once the bright lights of the press tour dimmed.

Aloha may well be the last feature we ever get from director Cameron Crowe, the man who gave us such classics as Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, and Say Anything… (to say nothing of his big break writing Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Its calamitous 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and $26 million global box office alone were probably not enough to land someone in such an extended“director’s jail” stint. But the film became unexpected collateral damage in North Korea’s cyberattack related to the release of The Interview. Afterward, outlets like Gawker reveled in hacked emails that provided vivid substantiation to behind-the-scenes production dramas usually restricted to the realm of rumor.

When the film limped into theaters six months later, neither the studios nor the stars worked all that hard to hide that they were releasing damaged goods. “There is no more to do,” wrote then-studio head Amy Pascal in her email epitaph for Aloha. “Cameron never really changed anything.” Releasing a film that whitewashes an ethnic character is not a good thing to do at any time, to be clear, but May 2015 was an exceptionally bad time to do so given that Wesley Morris of The New York Times declared it “the year we obsessed over identity.” The movie never stood a chance.

With the opportunity for a second look away from all the noise around Aloha’s release, a clearer picture comes into focus. Crowe’s Hawaiian rom-com is not misbegotten, just misunderstood. It should not be analyzed through the politically tinged lens of literalism but rather through the genre’s preferred framework of fantasy. Take the film sincerely, not seriously, and Crowe’s work becomes one of both pleasantness and potency.

If all the characters spoke with a fake mid-Atlantic accent, perhaps this would be easier for audiences to grasp. Aloha sees Cameron Crowe operating primarily in a romantic comedy register of the ‘30s screwball variety. When the newly enforced moralistic production codes enforced America’s puritanical sexual values, the flirtatiousness of the genre moved from the physical to the verbal by necessity. As the swinging ’60s loosened the country’s figurative collar, that sublimated sensuality largely disappeared from the rom-com in favor of a newfound naturalism.

Crowe’s hyperliterate prose stylings make him an excellent filmmaker to bring this rapid-fire repartee back. The dialogue sounds believable enough for actual people to utter it, but it’s not meant to be realistic. It’s stylized, and the performances of mega-wattage stars ranging from Emma Stone’s perky captain to John Krasinski’s literalization of the “strong silent type” reflect that.

And if that’s not enough of a giveaway, consider that the setting of Aloha is in Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific. While glitzy backdrops often come under fire within the romantic comedy genre, they are a necessary condition for the stories to make any sense. Where else in the world can people devote so much time to obsessing over the happiness of their souls? That seemingly preposterous poshness is part of the plan!

As a writer-director, Crowe has always fused elements of being both a fabulist and journalist. His real project with Aloha is to see if he can harmonize the screwball sensibility with the humbler humanism he brought to films like Almost Famous (successfully) and Elizabethtown (less so). While these might sound like inconsequential differences, the former shoots for the grandiosity of the stars while the latter aims for the intimacy of the heart. Within Aloha, the burden of bridging these two styles falls on Bradley Cooper’s military contractor Brian Gilcrest.

The film weaves, as Gilcrest does, across disparate personal and professional realms. The blue-eyed, silver-tongued protagonist stands at quite the crossroads. He returns to the Hawaiian Islands thinking he might rekindle an old flame with past lover Tracy (Rachel McAdams), while feelings for his Air Force liaison Allison Ng (Stone) drag him stubbornly into the present.

Within each relationship, Cooper gets to channel a different leading man who could stand toe-to-toe with the dynamite Katharine Hepburn. With McAdams, he’s in more of a Spencer Tracy mode trying to respond to her neuroticism by reasserting his authority. But opposite Stone’s force of nature, he’s rendered a Cary Grant always on his backfoot to her fast-charging charm. This love triangle is the real power base of Aloha, and it’s remarkable to see how Crowe can capture the chemistry between his leads through lines and looks alike.

An inverted tension pervades Gilcrest’s official duties as he tries to forge ahead into the privately funded Space Age by exploiting the rich heritage of the indigenous communities. All you really need to know about this B-plot of Aloha is how it echoes the characters’ relationship dynamics. But it’s here, amidst satellites and space exploration, where many people (including Amy Pascal) claimed the film became too far-fetched or nonsensical. You know, as if the romantic comedy, ranging from all tiger shenanigans in Bringing Up Baby to the improbability of the Empire State Building meetup in Sleepless in Seattle, has always adhered to the strictest codes of logic.

By the end of Aloha, Crowe proves he’s neither a nostalgist nor a futurist. He’s interested in how to marry the effervescence of the genre’s history with the earnestness of its present (one that he helped usher in). It tracks that the movie wants to engage with the cosmos in both plot and theme. Crowe made a movie about forces that are bigger and more wonderful than anyone can explain with words.

It’s telling, then, that he renders the film’s emotional climax entirely wordless. In the moment, the hyperverbal Gilcrest chooses to communicate something poignant and powerful just by looking and feeling at another person. If you’re willing to give yourself over to the spirit of Aloha, you’ll find the movie can work that same magic on you.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.