Larry Crowne a Tom Hanks Film

Went to See Larry Crowne today, if being honest I did fancy it, who wouldn't.  A Tom Hanks film starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, it has to be great, hasn't it?

Well, no. It was o.k. and a good diversion for 90 plus minutes, but I did find myself looking at my trusty Timex with light up screen on more than one occassion, which is always a sign that I am on the verge of wandering to the loo or even out for a fag, but I stuck with it.

Going to the cinema was a spur of the moment thing.  I had a long lie in today, I am on hols and have been pottering about doing bits and bobs over the last few days and was still in my dressing gown at noon.  I know, lazy bugger, I can hear the mutterings from here, but it's my holidays so if I want to laze about ....  Anyway, I made the mistake of opening up a work email and responding to it both by email and phone call and then writing a wee blog about my 8 year old grand daughters love life I suddenly had an urge to get out and so invited Ishbel to my office, kitchen table, to look at the cinema listings.  We had a choice, Transformers 3 fancy it but can wait, and probably glad that we did as there was lots of spotty kids who I am sure should have been in a classroom somewhere in the borough.  Bad Teacher, with Cameron Diaz, The Bridemaids, The Hangover Part 3 and The Green Lantern (Big fan of the comics when I was a kid)

Anyway, I knew what Ishbel wouldn't want to see, so we had a look at the trailers for Bad Teacher and Larry Crowne.  The trailers were fabulous for both movies but, it seems that all the best bits (but of course they were you numpty that's how they hook you, I know) where there and it looked as if it was a winner, although so did Bad Teacher, and as I say with Hanks and Roberts you couldn't go wrong.

Well Ishbel loved every single minute of it and I loved bits of it, mostly the bits that I had already seen in the trailer!   A romcom with pauses would be how I would describe it.  The dictionary on my Kindle describes pause as, '[to] interrupt action or speech briefly: she paused, at a loss for words', or; 'temporary stop in action or speech.' So,. a brief interruption is what it should have felt like however these pauses seemed to go on endlessly and it was for me at least something that a pause should never be and is not intended to be, a distraction, hence the glances at my watch I mentioned earlier.

The premise to the movie is that Hanks, playing the lead, Larry Crowne is laid off from his job as his employers decide that as he has never been to college and therefore will not be offered any advancement within the company, he can no longer be  employed regardless of the fact that he has won 9 awards for employee of the month, year, decade.  This took up the opening 10 or 12 minutes of the film and was the first glance at my watch, it really was one of the most boring opening sequences to a movie that I have had the misfortune to sit through.  If I had been in the house and switched this on on the TV I would have already jumped ship.

We then discover that Larry is living alone in a large suburban house on his own having apparently had a divorce and taking out a large re-mortgage to buy out his wife's share of the family home.  His neighbour Lamar, played by Cedric The Entertainer, having won $500,000.00 on the Wheel of Fortune now spends his time holding yard sales out of his garage and in the front garden and I could see the funny side of that, knowing someone who tells me that if he won the lottery he would buy a field and run his own boot fayre extravaganza.  Roberts character played a semi drunk teacher in a loveless marriage and Hanks ends up in her classes at the local college in an attempt to improve his education.  They had one encounter outside the classroom and we are expected to believe that this one brief encounter led to Roberts throwing her porn loving stay at home husband writer of two published books out on the street in favour of Hanks but they do not actually go out or get together until the closing credits.

I was taken by the young actress, Gugu Mbatha-Raw who played a scooter riding student Talia, who takes Hanks under her wing, but I think this was more to do with her engaging smile and prettiness and of course being the aficionado  of Ishbels' clothing that I am I did turn to her on a couple of occasions and say that I loved her, Talias', outfits, it's my feminine side you know!

George Takei, Star Treks original Mr Sulu was also in the movie and I love this guy on Twitter.  He also played a teacher, Professor, but I have to say it was quite painful to watch.  While I do love this guy I think he is past his best in terms of acting and needs to stick now to championing those issues close to his heart, such as gay rights, and leave the acting to others, absolutely no disrespect intended.

All said and done, it was  O.K. but would have been better as a TV movie over an hour with advert breaks, which could have been recorded, then deleted without watching or saved until SKY TV collapses and then watched as there is nothing else on to watch, not that I watch SKY at the moment, but there you go.....

My Rating out of 5 - 2 stars
Ishbels' Rating out of 5 - 4 stars

Last word to Ishbel, " I loved it"

Best Wishes