Aloha

Most romantic comedies are usually trite, predictable and unoriginal, however when I saw "Aloha", this changed--at least the way it was written. This was, in a sense, a rom-com, but there was certainly more going on as subplots came into play. So this being a relational piece where boy meets girl, girl doesn't like boy at first, then ultimately boy wins over girl isn't all that's going on.

Brian Gilchrist (Bradley Cooper), a celebrated military contractor returns to the site of his greatest career's triumphs in Honolulu, Hawaii and re-connects with a long ago love, Tracy Woodside (Rachel McAdams) while unexpectedly falling for the hard-charging Air Force watchdog, Allison Ng (Emma Stone) whose assigned to him. You see, Gilchrist and Ng eventually team up to thwart a satellite launch spear-headed by Gilchrist's old boss back in the NASA days, Carson Welch (Bill Murray). While all this is happening, Tracy's husband, Woody (John Krasinski) a pilot in the Air Force, doesn't seem to be able to open up with his wife, Tracy all to the chagrin of her.

Others to round out the cast are Danny McBride as Col. "Fingers" Lacy, Alec Baldwin as General Dixon, Bill Camp as Bob Largent, Jaeden Lieberher as Mitchell, Danielle Rose Russell as Grace, Michael Chernus as Roy, Edi Gathegi as Lt. Col. Curtis and Dennis Bumpy Kanahele as Himself.

This was directed deftly by the consummate Cameron Crowe ("Say Anything" '89, "Singles" '92, "Jerry Maguire" '96, "Almost Famous" 2000, "Vanilla Sky" '01, "Elizabethtown" '05, "The Union" (Documentary) '11, "Pearl Jam Twenty" (Documentary) '11, "We Bought a Zoo" '11). He simply has the ability to make his actors look as effortless in their roles as can ever be expected. Of course when one has actors as Cooper, Stone and McAdams at their disposal, a lot can surely happen. Although Crowe's writing has almost always been spot on, this had to take a back seat to the directing and acting. For the 105 minute running time this had, there were too many slow areas where the actors seemed as though they were pausing--for what I'm not sure. It just appeared clumsy at times and the relational part of the film wasn't as delineated with the plot to thwart the satellite as much as it should have. Hey, Crowe is a seasoned veteran and knows how to write well, so I suppose it's easy to raise the bar on him a bit, but even the great cast of this, albeit helped, couldn't totally save this. It's premise was interesting, and although the writing was good, it just needed a bit more polish.

If there is no other reason to see this than for the fine acting and directing, it will certainly suffice. Because the attempt to bring this story to life was an admiral venture, you will be still be entertained since Crowe is not only in the director's chair, but also the one who penned this as well.

Out of 4 Stars: 3                                  Rated: PG-13                                 105mins.