Following four fallow years since We Bought a Zoo, Cameron Crowe returns with a new film in his signature style: entirely uncool and old-fashioned, but often satisfying in its honeyed smoothness.
He’s the director of irony-free romances such as Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous and Say Anything, and new film Aloha seems to be in very much the same vein. Bradley Cooper returns to the middle of the road as military contractor Brian Gilcrest, having his balls broken by his superior Alec Baldwin for messing up a space mission. He must return to Hawaii, where he made his name. Why? Because in Cameron Crowe’s world, life is one big second chance.
Once there he meets Emma Stone’s tough-but-sassy air officer, using that age-old symbol of women asserting their worth in the armed forces without sacrificing their sexiness: aviator shades. There’s also former flame Rachel McAdams, married to the uncommunicative John Krasinki. Bill Murray offers crinkly wisdom. Danny McBride DJs in a Santa hat.
In Cameron’s Hawaii, it’s always a gorgeous 5pm light, and as ever in his oeuvre, characters gaze cutely at each other with looks that read: “You may be flawed but gosh darn it if you aren’t redeemable.” And of course there’s the safely alternative American guitar anthem, here from Cold War Kids.
Will it be Cameron descending into self-parody, or simply doing what he does best? Find out when the film is released on 29 May in the US and 4 September in the UK.
