WASHINGTON — Great ingredients, a great chef and a great kitchen don’t always make a great meal, just like a talented cast, accomplished filmmaker and cultured setting don’t guarantee a good movie.
Such is the case with Cameron Crowe’s new Hawaiian romantic comedy “Aloha,” which has been in trouble since December when hacked emails revealed dissatisfaction by then-Sony chief Amy Pascal. In the leaks, Pascal called several plot devices “ridiculous” and wrote, “I don’t care how much I love the director and the actors. It never, not even once, ever works.”
Thus, the film’s release was delayed from December to May, losing all hopes of award season acclaim like its Hawaiian peer “The Descendants” (2011) and allowing time for a massive overhaul in the editing room, cutting actor Jay Baruchel (“This is the End”) from the movie entirely. Two of the film’s backers now tell Variety the film is tighter, while a Sony executive adds, “It’s been months since those emails, and a ton of work has been done since then. The movie is really, really different.”
Whatever it was before, we’re left to try to make sense of this revised final cut.
Wounded in Afghanistan, Air Force veteran Brian Gilchrist (Bradley Cooper) now serves as a military contractor. He returns to the site of his greatest career triumph, Hawaii, to work for a space tech billionaire (Bill Murray), a twitchy colonel (Danny McBride) and a vocal general (Alec Baldwin), who want him to convince the natives into blessing a gate to allow the passage of U.S. military rockets.
While covertly conducting his mission, he unexpectedly falls for his hyper Air Force watchdog, Allison Ng (Emma Stone), all while re-connecting with an old flame, Tracy Woodside (Rachel McAdams), who now lives with her two kids and her workaholic, silent-type husband, Woody (John Krasinski).
The sum total is disappointing considering the insane talent of the individual parts.
Cooper does his best to blend the military cred of “American Sniper” (2014) with the comedic chops of both his lowbrow blockbusters — from “Wedding Crashers” (2005) to “The Hangover” (2009) — and his Oscar contenders — from “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012) to “American Hustle” (2013).
You’ll wish you could fast-forward his flimsy Kabul backstory and confusing contractor mission to enjoy more intimate moments of interpersonal relationships, like gifting Stone a hysterically ridiculous hat with built-in sunglasses. The two get dangerously close to chemistry, with a meta nods to “Birdman” and the Cooper-Stone competition of “Cabaret” and “Elephant Man” on Broadway.
But for every organic step forward, there are two baked-in steps backward, often with the forced dialogue of a whitewashed script. Of course, the plot plays out among the U.S. military community, à la “From Here to Eternity” (1953), but these outsiders try too hard to fake the local culture.
The child actors come closest to selling their Hawaiian heritage, as Danielle Rose Russell (“A Walk Among the Tombstones”) breaks down during the hula, while Jaeden Lieberher (“St. Vincent”) recites local mythology to insist that Cooper is the Lono to the goddess Pele, marking the divine “Arrival.”
Such mythology requires so much explanation that the price of exposition isn’t worth the payoff, setting up moments of magical realism without satisfying them in the climax. We feel as if we’re watching the culture from a distance, as if through the creaking backdoor of a Hawaiian home.
We’re told that Stone is quarter-Hawaiian, but she’s so adamant that we never quite buy it. Time and again, the film shoves Haole pegs into Hapa holes, discussing the native life energy of mana with an ironic lifelessness. Just as Cooper’s “Wedding Crashers” pal shouted, “Crabcakes and football: That’s what Maryland does,” you can almost hear Stone shout, “Mana and Hula: That’s what Hawaii does!”
Which brings us to McAdams, whose “Crashers” role proved she could play an effective stolen romance across screen from Cooper. Unfortunately, “Aloha” doesn’t give her much room to work. One has to assume her part was truncated as a result of the Sony leaks, where Pascal complained, “People don’t like people in movies who flirt with married people or married people who flirt.”
Crowe should have stuck to his guns, remembering that his own favorite movie — Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” (1960) — was filled with two-timers. Need modern-day proof? Check out Don Draper, Tony Soprano or Woody Harrelson’s character in HBO’s “True Detective,” which cast McAdams in Season 2. Today’s audiences can handle the anti-hero, rooting for them despite their flaws.
Alas, Cooper’s most intimate moments don’t come with McAdams but rather with Krasinski, saying so much without saying anything, à la “Annie Hall” (1977). Krasinski steals the show in a supporting cast that is sorely underutilized. There’s nothing worse than watching a trio of comedic geniuses — Murray, Baldwin and McBride — become lost in a script’s serious, but unrealistic framing device.
This device orbits the film’s world so heavily that it obscures our vision of the earthly emotions below, leading to a climax that features an amusing barrage of audio pop culture references — from “Se7en” (1995) to “A Few Good Men” (1992) — but which eclipses the film’s more modest moments.
We can see the commentary he’s going for — an Eisenhower-style warning of a runaway military industry complex destroying the traditions of native peoples who worship the heavens. But Crowe’s sky is too vanilla, causing him to unfairly eat crow among claims of “white man’s burden,” even if his heart in the right place. We see his good intentions — giving Dennis “Bumpy”Kanahele a shirt that reads “Hawaiian by Birth, American by Force” — but the subject feels foreign to the storyteller.
Crowe has always been best when he sticks to his own personal identity: the high school potheads of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), the boom box apologies of “Say Anything” (1989), the wheel-and-deal contracts of “Jerry Maguire” (1996) and the rock groupies of “Almost Famous” (2000).
Such a list of credits should make every film critic stop before crucifying Crowe and declaring the end of his career. Making a movie is much harder than panning one — let alone making a good one.
And so, we can choose to walk out of the theater with one of two reactions.
Like Cooper, we can smile and say, “I remember the good times.”
Or like Baldwin, we can shout, “There were no good times!”
I won’t go that far — I’m still chuckling at that sunglass hat — but this movie lacks some serious mana.
★ ★
The above rating is based on a 4-star scale. See where this film ranks in Jason’s Fraley Film Guide. Follow WTOP Film Critic Jason Fraley on Twitter @JFrayWTOP.
