Come off it, Tom

Larry Crowne is horrible, just horrible, and I urge you to avoid it like the plague. It’s a ‘rom-com’ starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts and if you thought you can’t go wrong with Hanks and Roberts, two of the greatest screen presences alive, here is proof that you can. This is stilted, lifeless, bears absolutely no relation to how real people talk or behave, and is offensively sexist, or at least I found it so. Tom Hanks directs himself in this, and also wrote the original script, so if you ever thought you can’t have too much Hanks here is something else to blow your mind: you so, so can.

OK, Larry Crowne is a middle-aged man who used to be a cook in the navy but now works in a Walmart-type store. Larry loves his job and picks up the store’s car-park litter on his way in and out of work because ‘it’s the right thing to do’. Larry’s face is startlingly immobile — Christ, what’s the world coming to when even Hanks has Botox? — but is an enthusiastic employee, popular with colleagues and customers. But then he’s called into the boss’s office and fired because cuts are required and Larry doesn’t have a college education. What, everyone else on the shop floor has a college education? If it’s just an excuse, why would you want to get rid of Larry first, anyhow? He’s your dream worker. I’m not saying films have to be true to life, but they have to be true to an idea of life, at least. And I think you know you’re in trouble when you can’t even believe in the initial premise of a film. You may even sigh inwardly and say to yourself, ‘I don’t believe this.’ What you wouldn’t do is say it to yourself out loud, as the characters in this film do all the time.