'Larry Crowne' is fatuous and bizarre

Film: Larry Crowne (U/A)
Cast: Tom Hanks, George Takei, Julia Roberts, Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P Henson
Director: Tom Hanks
Rating: *1/2

Larry Crowne (Hanks), a middle-aged mega store team leader (and a lovable character), is forced to seek out a higher education after he, a nine-time employee of the month, is callously terminated on short notice for not having gone to college (of all things!).

With a house mortgage weighing heavily on his mind, Crowne joins a community college and signs up for an economics course and (rather needlessly) ‘The Art of Informal Remarks’ taught by Shakespeare and Shaw expert Mercedes Tainot (Roberts), who is frustrated by her husband, a washed out writer and pornography addict (some higher power decreed that the aforementioned details are all the audience must know about him).

Crowne (now smarter than Forrest Gump, but as loveable as Hanks's character in You've Got Mail) catches the eye of the free-spirited Talia, (Mbatha-Raw) a member of a pack of scooter-riding, feng shui-practising weirdos led by Wilmer Valderrama (!), who insists on calling our protagonist ‘Lance’ and touching up his appearance and home.

Crowne, as a victim of the times, amazingly, faces zero conflict in his endeavours. Yes, he must part with his possessions and work at a diner, but it’s amazing how he, a former navy cook, sails through with his studies (the complex economics course, not informal remarks) and doesn’t have girl troubles. (For one second, though, we do learn that he was divorced at some point of his life, but that is never brought up again.)

Tainot is an irredeemable alcoholic curmudgeon. Ever ready to cancel classes at the drop of a hat, she perpetually complains about how none of students cares, but she never seems to pay any notice to the content of their presentations. Having no fathomable reason to love Crowne, she is enigmatically infatuated with him after he escorts her to her house while her husband gets busted by the police on charges we never learn of (an event she takes an abnormal amount of delight in).

The film is framed between 2 Electric Light Orchestra songs which just might be the best part of it. All secondary characters, planted to add colour and whimsicality to the overall picture, do so (even Cedric the Entertainer, surprisingly) but with the absence of strong writing and deeper character development (it always appeared that the loutish husband was just part of Tainot's problems and her drinking issues weren't quite resolved), this serves no purpose.

With the acting from Hanks, Roberts and Takei as the economics professor saving the movie from being truly dismal, Crowne’s writers Nia Vardalos and Hanks try hard to make the script endearing and heartfelt but it lacks enough laughs to be an out-and-out comedy. Neither does it possess enough depth to be regarded as drama. Though not entirely unwatchable, Larry Crowne's lightheartedness is its failing.