I searched and couldn’t find a previous thread, but this film just started airing on HBO yesterday and we watched it, much like someone who can’t turn their eyes away from a horrible train wreck in progress.
This film sucked on almost every level.
Quick synopsis - Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks), older divorced single guy with no kids, loses his job at a Walmart-type store because he doesn’t have a college degree, He decides to go back to college. Falls in love with his Speech teacher (Julia Roberts), hangs out with the cool crowd, and happy end.
There was so much suck in this film it is hard to list it:
Why did they fire a guy, who was probably hours from retirement, simply because of lack of college degree - it was no surprise, they knew it and he was Employee of the Month nine times. Plus he was the manager of stocking supplies - not exactly the CEO. Whatever…
The cool crowd he hangs out with would have been considered unrealistic idiot doofuses on Vespas even back in the Leave It To Beaver era, let alone 2011 (when this crapola was filmed).
Julia Roberts is supposed to be this great teacher. I have personally taught Speech classes for years and I can tell you her class was horrible, her teaching methods were inadequate, her students started off terrible and barely achieved a final level of below par for the grand final speech scene.
The romance between Hanks and Roberts was spark-free; perhaps both of them should have taken a chemistry class to try to find any chemistry whatsoever.
I never thought Julia Roberts could sink lower and be worse than her performance in Eat, Pray, Love; I was wrong.
Tom Hanks is credited as Producer, Director, Co-Writer and of course, lead actor in this mess. He proves in one fell swoop he is not a man of many talents.
What could have been an interesting, funny film about re-entering college later in life turned into the worst sitcom pilot since Work It aired earlier this year.
If you have absolutely nothing to do and have a choice between watching Larry Crowne on HBO, or watching paint dry - I would grab a chair and stare and the walls for a couple of hours. It would be far more interesting and a better use of your time.
Quick question. I never watched the movie but I saw all the ads.
Was Hanks’s character supposed to be a little slow, or have a learning disability or something? Your description doesn’t indicate that, but in the ads he seems mildly retarded, or autistic, or something.
It’s never indicated he has any mental disorder, his character reminded me of a slightly more believable Forest Gump type, I think he’s just simple minded.
And I would have to completely agree with the OP. I’m not sure what Hanks was trying to accomplish with this movie but whatever it was it failed. I guess the message is go to college and you’re life will completely change for the better because, I don’t know, random life improving crusaders and desperate recent divorcees?
Nope. He was just a regular guy. He was trying to play “everyman”…the cool girl in the cool kids group had a friend give him a new hair cut, and outfitted him with some new clothes so he would fit in better with the other doofuses. But other than that change, he was supposed to be a normal “old guy” going back to school.
Is it just me, or has Julia Roberts’ career finally hit a dead-end?
I know next to nothing about Ms. Roberts, and as far as I know have only seen 3 of her movies (Erin Brockovich, The Pelican Brief and the one where her and Mel Gibson, who “played” a crazy man, tried to solve a murder or somesuch) but for a while, she seemed like she was the most bankable female leading lady in Hollywood.
I think her last several movies have all bombed, but I may be mistaken about that; Has she finally worn out her welcome as America’s Sweetheart?
I should add that although I really don’t have any idea about what Julia Roberts is like as a person, from the handful of interviews I have seen with her (Letterman, Leno, etc.) she strikes me as being one of the most narcissistic, egotistical, full-of-herself people in the entire entertainment industry, on par with Madonna, Donald Trump or Oprah. I may well be 100% wrong about this, but that is how she comes across to me…
The basic story was a guy in late middle age coming to learn that he was still capable of starting over - he wasn’t just stuck in the life that he had established decades before.
But to start him on this story, the movie needed to kick him into motion first. So Larry’s wife left him and his company fired him. Larry had lost the main things he defined his life by and this forced him to examine his life and find new meanings for it. You have to accept the idea that WalMart would arbitrarily fire somebody like Larry because otherwise you had no movie (which probably wouldn’t have bothered the OP).
I had no problem with Julia Roberts’ character. I don’t recall the movie saying she was supposed to be a great teacher - she was a community college teacher who was going through the motions. She became a better teacher during the course of the movie.
I do agree there were problems with the younger characters. I didn’t have any particular problem with the Vespas but Talia was such a stereotypical manic pixie dream girl that Mercedes actually lampshaded it at one point.
But overall I think the movie was a decent attempt to make a movie about regular people facing regular life rather than the extraordinary characters and situations you see in the overwhelming majority of movies.
Could Julia Roberts’ name come up once in a thread without someone trotting out the lame horse gags? It wasn’t funny or interesting the first 30 billion times.
(I will never get why the internet decides it is cool to hate certain celebrities.)
Eat Pray Love grossed over $200 million on a $60 million budget – same year she was part of the ensemble cast that helped make Valentine’s Day an even better return on investment – which I’d figure prompted folks to put up the $85 million for Mirror Mirror, which is in theaters at $135 million and climbing. You could do worse.
Larry Crowne was certainly, shall we say forgettable. I have seen it and can barely remember anything but the motor scooter. I don’t recall disliking it while watching it but it’s almost like I watched it while in a stupor. Maybe I was doing something else as well at the time.
Why are we discussing Julia Robert’s “failing” career when Tom Hank’s seems to be falling just as fast? When’s the last time time he starred (and not just voiced) a critically acclaimed box office hit?
That may not be fair, since the intersection of critical acclaim and fantastic profits is actually pretty small. If you’re willing to go with box office alone, Angels & Demons (2009) made $486M worldwide.