Above: Emma Stone brightens up Mr. Crowe's movie. Photo
©Columbia Pictures and 20TH Century Fox
What’s the matter with
“Aloha”? According to the proverbial
pundits, everything. Since opening at
the close of May, Cameron Crowe’s sunny opus has been savaged for its sloppy filmmaking
and its “paltry” $10 million debut. Yet
basking in this messy movie’s mild charm, I couldn’t help feeling forgiving. “Aloha” may not be perfect (is any Cameron
Crowe movie perfect?), but it does zap you with a clean dose of ocean-side
effervescence and snappy theatrics from Emma Stone.
With grace and gusto, Ms. Stone upstages every member of the
movie’s ensemble, including Bradley Cooper, who plays some guy named Brian
Gilcrest. Brian, we are told is a war
veteran…and also a mercenary…and, wait a minute, a computer hacker too? Forget it.
Mr. Crowe doesn’t care about the finer points of the character; there’s
little point in trying to pin down his rather loose imagination as he sets
Brian loose in Hawaii and lets romantic merriment unfold.
Enter Captain Allison Ng (Ms. Stone), a fighter pilot
assigned to keep an eye on Brian as he irons the kinks in the relationship between
Hawaiian activist Dennis “Bumpy" Kanahele (who plays himself with
easygoing, masterly assurance) and the billionaire developer Carson Welch (Bill
Murray). What Kanahele doesn’t realize
is that Brian is backing Carson’s planned launch of a dubious (and illegal) new
missile—something that infuriates the unfailingly good-hearted Allison.
So there’s a current of uneasiness coursing through this
breezy comedy. Mr. Crowe, however, is
not a pessimist—if he values anything, it is love buoyed by mischief. Hence Ms. Stone’s ingenious physicality— whenever
she salutes, she looks like she’s swiping a saber through the air, so fiercely
that you can practically hear the whoosh of her arm. In many ways, she makes Allison into a goofy
cartoon, a sketch of an uptight soldier frantically scratched out in the pages
of Mad magazine. Yet that is precisely what makes the
character so poignant, and also why Ms. Stone is sometimes able to focus “Aloha”
with the acting equivalent of an electric shot.
And what of Mr. Cooper?
Brian is not meant to be loveable (there’s a throwaway line about
“compromises” he’s made). But did Mr.
Cooper have to bludgeon his smarmy grin against the camera in every scene? Every talk, fight, or kiss seems to the
result of or a prelude to yet another creepy spread of his lips to reveal his
(admittedly gorgeous) teeth. Sure, Mr.
Cooper is a ripe talent (if you gorge on only one performance this week, be
sure it’s his boyishly nasty turn in “American Hustle”). But he comes off as too cocky and
disingenuous for what is, in the main, a conventional romantic comedy.
“Conventional” could describe pretty much everything Mr.
Crowe does—the “neurotic boy meets gorgeous girl” formula is the core of all
his movies. But he has a way of
countering predictability with eccentricity, as evidenced by a scene in “Aloha”
where Mr. Cooper starts howling out of a car window like a coyote. Ditto for the rhythm of the movie; Mr.
Crowe’s zest for fast talk may make him a forerunner of Marvel movie
freneticism, but he has a way of softening the marathon by elongating scenes
far beyond the norm.
This
tactic is most noticeable during a lengthy sequence where Brian and Allison
hike up a woodsy slope to Mr. Kanahele’s home, while the camera calmly follows
in their wake. With its leisurely pace,
the scene might remind you of another stretched-out cinematic moment—the sweet
and goofy graduation party in Mr. Crowe’s first movie, “Say Anything.” “Aloha” doesn’t feature anything as spectacularly
iconic, but it is possible to glimpse the same spark of comedic life, gently peaking
through.
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