Larry Crowne (2011)

Directed by: Tom Hanks | 99 minutes | drama, comedy | Actors: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, George Takei, Bryan Cranston, Wilmer Valderrama, Taraji P. Henson, Pam Grier, Nia Vardalos, Rami Malek, Rob Riggle, Jon Seda

‘Splash’, ‘Big’, ‘Forrest Gump’, ‘You’ve Got Mail’, ‘Cast Away’, ‘The Terminal’. If one actor can be called the king of softies, it’s Tom Hanks. With the feel-good film ‘Larry Crowne’, produced, written and directed by Hanks, he goes one step further. Tom Hanks in the title role delivers a hundred minutes of good-natured cuddliness. Larry Crowne is so innocent, he should be allowed to cast the first stone with confidence. Though he would never get there himself.

Larry, a middle-aged man, is a department store chief. When he walks across the parking lot, he snatches the stuffing from the asphalt and casts an all-seeing look around him: is everything okay? Everthing allright. Not for Larry, by the way, that morning, because he’s getting fired. Lack of development opportunities. “You are forever retarded because you don’t have a degree,” a colleague puts it. For a moment Larry’s good-natured look disappears, but he immediately starts looking for other work. Must too, with his mortgage. He approaches potential employers in a hurry. But it’s a crisis and nobody needs an unqualified ex-navy cook, if he shakes their hands so jovially. Things have to change, Larry realizes. He exchanges his car for a scooter and registers for a study at a ‘community college’. “You do have to work for it!” the dean warns him. That is not so bad with the course ‘Speech 217 – the art of informal remarks’. Larry’s class is an enthusiastic mix of intellectually challenged youth. Toasted bread is a serious topic and the cry “Be aggressive!” goes on for a presentation. As long as you do push-ups with it. Despite the age difference, Larry immediately makes friends. He even gets to join a happy moped gang calling themselves the “Justice and Beauty Street Patrol” and renaming Larry Crowne “Lance Corona”. To do that, he must first struggle through a cringe-inducing finger-cutting scene. In front of the class is the grumpiness and cynicism of teacher Mercedes “Mercy” Tainot (Julia Roberts). She regularly emphasizes the importance of dedication to her students. A hollow phrase in her case, she doesn’t even feign enthusiasm anymore. Fortunately, she still tries her best to look good. That doesn’t stop her unshaven husband Dean (Bryan Cranston) from lusting after busty ladies in smart swimwear online. No one is surprised at Scheveningen, but Tainot knows how it works: “You’re watching porn!”.

What ‘Larry Crowne’ lacks besides a challenging plot, is strangely enough especially Larry Crowne himself. His personality has less definition than a bowl of Hüttenkäse. How Larry survived twenty years in the navy is a miracle. Or practically impossible. With nothing but blissful amazement, Crowne allows his newfound friends to transform from a man who tucks in his polo shirts and wears his glasses on a string, to a quirky jacket-tie-shirt wearer. Larry likes everything? In other words: Larry lets himself be squeaked. Doesn’t scooter girl Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) like his glasses? She crushes it to smithereens before his eyes and maternally conjures up a hipper frame. Larry’s response: nada. As if he’s not a grown man, but a helpless kid from the Ikea ball pit. Possibly that prompts Talia to react so blissfully to nothing more than his presence as a sweet, sexless teddy bear. That is different for Mercedes Tainot, who gives both the film and the human ‘Larry Crowne’ some pleasant unrest with her grumpiness and unreasonableness. And it helps that she looks like Julia Roberts.

Goodness is almost elevated to an art form in ‘Larry Crowne’. The only movie kiss is one from the Clark Gable era, with twisted lips and civilized faces turning away from the camera. Still, ‘Larry Crowne’ could still be a happy, escapist film. One that convinces you that you can also face the crisis out there with a smile. (All you need is love.) But the screen simply lacks humor, romance and exciting events. Maybe a scooter club likes to chug around aimlessly to Tom Petty’s sing-along rock, a viewer might think otherwise.