There are many benefits to being as famous and bankable a movie star as Tom Hanks. Not least that the Hanks name can ease into production a passion project such as Larry Crowne, which the actor co-wrote, directed and stars in, apparently without the usual concerns over stuff such as having a decent script.
This is Hanks’s second film as a director — the first was the perky, somewhat bloodless take on the world of 1960s pop, That Thing You Do!, in 1996. And let’s put it this way: he clearly hasn’t spent the intervening 15 years honing his directorial edge.
Larry Crowne (played by Hanks) is a nice guy devoted to his job in a large retail outlet. The job, however, doesn’t place the same value on him and he’s fired ignominiously in the first five minutes of the film. With negative equity hanging around his neck like a long-dead albatross and no luck finding another job, the future looks bleak for Larry. But it’s OK, chirps the screenplay (co-written by Nia My Big Fat Greek Wedding Vardalos), good things happen to good people. Larry is about to turn his life around! It would be patronising if it wasn’t so cluelessly insipid.
With people all over America getting downsized and foreclosed, Hanks’s film seems to be arguing that middle-aged men should sign up for a few classes at community college and join a scooter gang, and, hey, everything will be just peachy. There’s mindless, feel-good escapism and then there is deluded, naive condescension, and this falls firmly into the latter camp. The multimillionaire Hanks commenting on the plight of the newly unemployed is a bit like the Duke of Edinburgh suggesting that poor people should take up polo to fill in those long, unproductive days on the dole.
Co-starring as Larry’s jaded public-speaking teacher, Mercedes, is Julia Roberts, wearing a sour expression and a pair of precipitously teetering high heels, two things that are probably not unrelated. Mercedes has lost her passion for teaching and for her blogging, porn-surfing spouse. For most things, in fact, apart from gin-based cocktails. But watching Larry’s personal reinvention reignites a flame in Mercedes long ago doused in disappointment and liquor. Gee whizz. Larry isn’t just realising his own potential — he’s a veritable rose-tinted catalyst, helping everyone he meets to look upon life with fresh eyes.
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Flaccid and flatulent, with no hint of dramatic tension, the screenplay is a work of creaking amateurism. But you would at least expect Hanks to be able to direct actors. However, even that skill eludes him. The timings are off, the chemistry is flat and the dialogue flows like tar. If this is what passes for an uplifting comedy, the gruelling, feel-bad option looks increasingly tempting.
Tom Hanks, 12A, 98 mins