Aloha, 2015.
Directed by Cameron Crowe.
Starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, John Krasinski, Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin.
SYNOPSIS:
A celebrated military contractor returns to the site of his greatest career triumphs and re-connects with a long-ago love while unexpectedly falling for the hard-charging Air Force watchdog assigned to him.
We learned a lot from those leaked Sony emails, including that writer/director Cameron Crowe’s latest film Aloha would border on being a disastrous mess. The emails claim that the story made no sense, plot points and characters were cut, and that production was generally troubled. Just how bad could a movie starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, Danny McBride, and Alec Baldwin really be?
The answer is pretty awful.
Let’s just get the elephant out of the room first; yes Aloha is a romantic dramedy set in Hawaii featuring almost exclusively white actors. The movie showcases natives for a grand total of roughly 10 minutes to showcase its military guilt plot point. Speaking of plot points, there are about 45 different arcs going on at once here, but before tackling that nonsense it needs to be said that Aloha isn’t necessarily racist, but rather dumb. For some inexplicable reason Cameron Crowe has decided to write Emma Stone’s character with mixed heritage that includes Chinese and Hawaiian. No one in their right mind could take this seriously, but that’s sort of a running theme with Aloha.
The movie sees Bradley Cooper as a shamed member of the military tasked with heading to Hawaii to convince the natives to allow the government to launch… something… and promise that they won’t put weapons in the sky. His mission also reunites him with a former love that is now married with children, as he falls in love with Emma Stone’s Air Force watchdog character. Apparently Bradley Cooper is so broken down and humiliated he needs babysitting at all times, but his moral shortcomings are never explored enough to even begin to care about his emotional struggles.
The movie fares a little better with its love triangle, but the narrative is blatantly predictable. A problem like that could be mitigated if the writing was strong enough to develop these characters into people we care about, thus forcing viewers to anticipate that inevitable ending, but it can’t, and I have no idea how considering the rest of the cast is largely ignored to focus on the three leads. Aloha is 105 minutes of dialogue that either goes in one ear and out the other, or features characters doing mind-numbingly stupid things that lack logic.
As previously mentioned, its plot points are scattered throughout the running time, covering everything from love, militant morals, to freaking ancient Hawaiian myths. There is a scene where Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone are driving at night and see a bunch of natives in costume, marching through a forest as part of some ritual, and Emma Stone literally starts freaking out because since Bradley Cooper isn’t Hawaiian, looking at the ritual will have him cursed. It’s as f****** ridiculous as it sounds.
The rest of the cast is completely wasted; Bill Murray is a villain whose motives are summed up in one line towards the end of the film with a generic “I’m doing this to protect my country”scene. Before that you would think he was a pretty good guy considering his only other lines are inspirational cheesy quotes about how the future is complicated. At least Danny McBride gets to be Danny McBride for a few scenes though, while Alec Baldwin has a film stealing comedic moment towards the end.
The only supporting character that works on some level is John Krasinski’s silent type husband to Rachel McAdams. He and Bradley Cooper share some funny scenes together where they stare at each other or pat each other on the shoulders, while subtitles decipher what their body language is conveying to each other. It is an interesting play on the age-old stereotype regarding how guys prefer to communicate their emotional feelings through stares and magic.
Aloha is one giant mess of a film but I can’t hate it; I admire what Cameron Crowe was attempting to do with the love story and feel that it’s simply a good idea with terrible execution. The acting is also decent for the most part, except when the script has Emma Stone act like a hyperactive weirdo that is far too idiosyncratic compared to the rest of the cast. I for one just can’t wait until Disney hires the great Asian actress for the live-action remake of Mulan.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder – An aficionado of film, wrestling, and gaming. Follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook
Originally published May 30, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
