The IMDB description of Larry Crowne:
“After losing his job, a middle-aged man reinvents himself by going back to college.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
HAHA.
Ha.
Now that I’ve stopped laughing, I think I’m going to cry. Middle-aged is right. Nothing against the age (getting there myself) but the older you are, the stronger your delusions about what college can do for you. The idea that going back to school will help you with in any real way??? That’s straight-from-the-eighties escapism, except without Rodney Dangerfield.
And Tom Hanks not only stars in it, but co-wrote and directed it. Recipe for disaster. And the Julia Roberts factor. I’m looking up poorly shot Family Guy clips just to get through this.
I normally make it a rule not to see movies that will piss me off. And why harsh my mellow after the triumph of Bad Teacher? But I kind of feel compelled to see this one, both because I have a vested interest in how the media portrays college, and because I feel it’s important to grasp just how bad people’s delusions are.
And of course it’s not cool enough to be at the Alamo, so if there is to be booze it must be snuck in.
It’s gonna be a long afternoon.
From The A.V. Club:
“There [at college], he [Hanks] strikes up a friendship with even-quirkier fellow student Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who takes on the duties of a strictly platonic Manic Pixie Dream Girl, giving Hanks a makeover, enlisting him into her “gang” of moped enthusiasts, and encouraging his interest in one of his teachers, a bitter, perpetually hungover English instructor played by Julia Roberts.”
Any more curious? I’m “excited” by the first African-American Manic Pixie Dream Girl. And, seeing a bitter, hung over Julia Roberts?
I mean, no one else liked the movie. No one. What the hey, right?
Yeah, that description is a little more enticing. And it wasn’t bad.
Reinvents himself…as the weird creepy middle-aged man who hangs out with undergrads and tries to pretend he’s 20?
Actually, I get the feeling that this movie might be okay until the last 20 minutes or so. Tom Hanks’s co-writer is that woman who wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was funny, so until Tom Hanks succeeds and Julia Roberts gets over being burned out it might not be so bad.
It wasn’t actually. But you’re right, there’s a creep factor. And I actually like Nia Vardalos a lot, it’s just that you’ve gotta be careful with all the sentiment!
How was it? I’m waiting for you to go in the pool first before I even stick my pinky toe in.
Not bad, actually!
You’re killing me. In a good way, of course.
Thanks?