Aloha

Stone, Cooper, and McAdams in Aloha

Cameron Crowe's Aloha deserves most of the brickbats thrown its way, but I enjoyed tiny bits of it. The film had been beleaguered with rumors of a troubled shoot and disastrous test screenings. The critical and box office response was dreadful and has sunk Crowe's reputation into the mire. Also damaging was the charge of cultural appropriation, which has some merit. I certainly chuckled in derision when lily white Emma Stone intoned in the film that she is a quarter Hawaiian and whatever native mystical threads introduced disappear by the time Aloha limps to its conclusion. However, cultural appropriation has become a catch all pejorative phrase and not all artistic borrowings are theft. Some are tributes and homages. Elvis Presley might not mean shit to Chuck D, but I think the world would have been poorer had the King not loved Gospel and R&B. 

Crowe has no feel for the military culture here ( as opposed to sports or rock and roll) and despite stalwarts like Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin on hand as officers, this flaw delivers the film into the realm of ludicrous nonsense; as does the miscasting of Bill Murray as a tech tycoon. The film's MacGuffin is that Murray's character needs the military's help in sending a rocket into space. Murray can certainly play a dramatic character, but is at sea here amidst the film's ever shifting tone. A dance with Ms. Stone at a military ball would seem to provide Murray a chance to shine, but the sequence has little impact because Crowe has no gift for visualizing spectacle. A good point of reference for comparison would be the twist scene in Pulp Fiction. 

Where Crowe's talent lies is in his articulation of relationships, particularly those of the young and not so innocent seeking mentors and romantic ideals. The romantic triangle of Stone, Bradley Cooper and Rachel McAdams, all charming, is a good example of this. For this alone, I hope Aloha will one day be reappraised, like Elaine May's Ishtar and Michael Lehmann's Hudson Hawk, not as profound or even good art, but as underrated professional filmmaking. (4/23/18)