Well, Christmas is over and soon 2015 will be over as well! And our long time readers know what that means — its time for Lisa to desperately try to get caught up on reviewing all of the films that she’s seen this year! After all, it will soon be time for me to post my “Best of” and “Worst of” lists and who knows? Some of these films might make a list!
Anyway, with all that in mind, let’s take a quick look at Aloha!
Say what you will about Aloha as a movie, I would have loved to have been a part of the production. Not only is the cast full of performers that I absolutely adore (Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, John Krasinski, Bill Murray, Rachel McAdams, and Danny McBride, just to name a few) but the film itself was shot in Hawaii, which is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. And let’s give director Cameron Crowe some credit for capturing some truly beautiful images of Hawaii.
As for the film itself, it’s a bit of a self-indulgent chore to sit through. Aloha feels like a dozen different films, all mashed together and the end result is something of a mess. Bradley Cooper is Brian Gilchrest, a defense contractor who is haunted by a mistake that he made while in Afghanistan. (It’s the equivalent of Jerry Maguire writing that memo and Orlando Bloom making those shoes in Elizabethtown.) Disillusioned and cynical, Brian is now working for a billionaire Carson Welch (Bill Murray), who wants to build his own private space center in Hawaii. Brian’s job is to get the support of the native Hawaiians.
Brian’s Air Force liaison is Alison Ng (Emma Stone) and she’s as idealistic as Brian is cynical. Brian and Alison are soon falling love but, at the same time, Brian has also reconnected with his ex-girlfriend, Tracy (Rachel McAdams). Tracy is now married to Woody (John Krasinski), an Air Force captain who has difficulty expressing his feelings. Tracy also has a 12 year-old daughter and Brian might be the father.
That may sound like enough for any movie to deal with but Aloha also wants to be a political satire as well as a relationship dramedy. So, of course, there’s all sorts of ethical questions about the satellite that Carson wants to launch and, as a character, Carson is so incredibly inconsistent that you’re just happy that he’s being played by Bill Murray, one of the few actors who can make inconsistency charming.
Aloha is such a frustrating film, largely because of all the talent involved. With that cast and all the beautiful scenery, it should have at least been an enjoyable lark. Instead, it’s a huge and self-indulgent mess.
And, naturally enough, it features Alec Baldwin. Baldwin always seems to show up in films like this and, as I watched him bellow his way through Aloha, I found myself wondering how Alec Baldwin can be so good in some films and so amazingly awful in others. Baldwin’s a talented actor but, when a director allows him to go overboard, he can be difficult to watch. In Aloha, Cameron Crowe lets Alec Baldwin go totally overboard.
When Aloha was first released, there was a lot of controversy over Emma Stone playing a character who supposed to be a quarter Chinese and a quarter Hawaiian. At the time, Cameron Crowe stated that: “As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud one-quarter Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one. A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii. Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets. The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that.” That’s something that I — as a pale redhead who happens to be very proud of being a fourth Spanish — could relate to so it didn’t particularly bother me that Emma Stone was playing a character named Alison Ng.
Instead, what bothered me was that Alison Ng was never really allowed to emerge as an individual character with her own hopes, dreams, and ambitions. Her character pretty much only existed to give Brian a reason to believe in life again. Emma Stone’s a good actress but, as a film, Aloha lets her down.
Still, at least she got to spend sometime in Hawaii!
Through the Shattered Lens 