| My rating | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critics | Audience | Critics | Audience | |
| 5/10 | 40/100 | 5.3/10 | 20% | 39% |
This movie is a typical example of a project that had everything to work… but didn’t. Written and directed by Cameron Crowe (who also directed Jerry Mcguire, Say Anything, Vanilla Sky, etc.) and starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray and Alec Baldwin, “Aloha” had a great trailer, but the movie itself was disappointing.
It tells the story of Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper), a military contractor who returns to Hawaii on an assignment and reconnects with a former girlfriend, Tracy Woodside (Rachel McAdams). However, he also starts to have feelings for Allison Ng (Emma Stone), an Air Force watchdog who is accompanying him on his new mission. Brian is now working for Carson Welch (Bill Murray), a billionaire who wishes to launch a communication satellite over the Hawaiian sky and, in order to do that, has to get permission from the local Hawaiians.
I believe it was mainly supposed to be a romantic comedy, but I didn’t laugh that much… The beginning of the movie is quite confusing and it takes a while to fully understand what’s going on. It feels like the script was out of order sometimes. Besides, it is very similar to “Elizabethtown” (2005), also directed and written by Cameron Crowe, which helps me to prove the point that it’s not one of Crowe’s best movies.
The confusion with the script is having consequences at the box office, as the movie was released almost two weeks ago in the U.S. and has earned a little over US$ 16 million so far.
Another point that has been criticized a lot in the last week is the casting of Emma Stone to play someone “half Swedish, one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Hawaiian”, as her character keeps saying on the movie. Apparently, a part of the audience was so angry that complained with Crowe for not casting someone Asian and he had to apologize publicly. Now I think people are exaggerating a little… how does someone ½ Swedish, ¼ Chinese and ¼ Hawaiian look like?? There is no way to precisely cast someone with that family background. If people really wanted to complain, they should have done it regarding the script…
To sum up, it’s a watchable movie, but it’s also very forgettable, in my opinion. The cast is what makes it worth watching.
