Larry Crowne is very cute and very slight. Director Tom Hanks is also the titular Crowne, one of his typically effervescent-but-naive characters, a wageslave at the local big box suddenly downsized. His neighbour clues him into the possibility of adult education, so off he goes to community college, where the decades-younger students welcome him as one of their own because he’s nice and rides a scooter. (To quote Woody Allen, if only life was like this!) Julia Roberts as a self-medicating prof gets the lions share of comedic moments—never has she been so endearingly crabby—and the supporting cast (including Pam Grier, George Takei, Wilmer Valdarrama, Bryan Cranston) scores, but a singular absence of drama undercuts any real emotion.
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 6, 2011.