DVD Reviews

Larry Crowne - Blu-ray Review

By Jeff Swindoll Nov 16, 2011, 10:39 GMT

$Academy Award winners Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts come together for a romantic and optimistic comedy about how it\'s never too late to reinvent yourself. When he suddenly finds himself without his long-standing blue-collar job, Larry Crowne (Hanks) enrolls at his local college to start over. There, he becomes part of an eclectic community of students and develops a crush on his teacher (Roberts). Now this simple guy will discover$

Academy Award winners Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts come together for a romantic and optimistic comedy about how it\'s never too late to reinvent yourself. When he suddenly finds himself without his long-standing blue-collar job, Larry Crowne (Hanks) enrolls at his local college to start over. There, he becomes part of an eclectic community of students and develops a crush on his teacher (Roberts). Now this simple guy will discover ...more

I guess we were expecting better of Larry since it starred two major movie stars. Its crime may be not living up to expectations, not that it wasn’t entirely unsuccessful. There’s just something about it that doesn’t jibe in today’s financial times.

Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) is a happy, go-getting employee at U-mart (Read: Target and Wal-mart). He thinks that he’s being called into the break room to get another employee of the month title, but what he discovers is that he’s being laid off for his lack of college degree.

Larry goes home in a daze and relays his troubles to his neighbor Lamar (Cedric the Entertainer), who has milked his lottery winnings into an eternal yard sale. He tells Larry since the college degree was the sticking point that he should go to community college - then tries to sell him a free college catalog.

So Larry registers for a speech class taught by Mrs. Tainot (Julia Roberts) and an economics class taught by Dr. Matsutani (George Takei). He also meets flirty fellow student Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who takes him under her wing, much to the chagrin of boyfriend Dell (Wilmer Valderrama), and Larry joins her scooter “gang.”

Mrs. Tainot is an unhappy teacher who drowns her troubles, porn-obsessed husband (Bryan Cranston), burn-out, etc., in alcohol. However, she and Larry seem to have sparks that might pull her from the doldrums.

Is Larry Crowne a failure? Depends on who you ask. Some press outlets were hailing its lack of box office as an end to the “star” picture. If the pairing of Hanks and Roberts can’t generate box office heat, then what could? Yet, it made twice its production costs (usually the sign of success), but it was envisioned with those stars it should’ve made more.

It may have just been wrong subject at wrong time as the sour economy were producing more real life Larry’s who didn’t have the Hanks star power or means to go to college to start over. I guess the film’s “pull up your bootstraps” message does still resonate but there’s an equal amount of Hollywood screenplay to it as well.

Are there really scooter gangs that snap ala West Side Story? Larry’s storyline is pretty easily predictable. Hanks is his affable best, Roberts is still fetching – even with her scowl in the beginning, and their combination does have its moments. Hanks also fills the supporting cast with (no doubt) friends and favors.

Takei is a delight as the overly dramatic, full-of-himself economics professor (he did remind me of a substitute I had in community college), but others feel of stunt casting (Roberts, Hanks, Cedric, Cranston).

The story may have worked better if Hanks had stayed behind the camera, cast unknowns, and kept it feeling more real than Hollywood. Our current economic times may have flavored things since the laughs, for me at least, meant for the firing scene at the beginning left me cold as I imagined this was happening for real more than I’d like to think about it.

Larry Crowne is presented in a 1080p high definition transfer (2.40:1). Special features, all in high definition, include the 11 minute making of, 8 minutes of deleted scenes, and 10 minutes of “fun on the set.”

Larry isn’t a big success, yet it isn’t a big failure either. It falls somewhere in the middle. What I hope it doesn’t mean is the death of “adult” films as this is what it was trying to be (my guess is that we’ll be seeing more PG-13 teen crap thanks to the middling box office). Hanks tried but he still ended up laid off, Julia too, but luckily I think they will still find other work.