Larry Crowne (2011)

Pickles and strawberry ice cream. Lamb and tuna fish. Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks. Sometimes it happens that two great things just aren’t so great together. That’s what I discovered in Larry Crowne, which pairs two of the biggest stars of the 1990s in a romantic comedy geared towards the Centrum Silver set.

In the film, Hanks plays Larry Crowne, a perennial nice guy who works at a big box department store called UMart. As a nine-time employee of the month–who even takes the time to recycle the trash left behind in his store’s parking lot–he is caught completely off guard when given his pink slip. Despite his 10 good years with the company and his 20-year military service, he lacks the right stuff (read: a college degree) to move up the company ladder.

So, on the advice of his zany neighbors Lamar and B’Ella (Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson), who also sell him a motorized scooter to replace his gas-guzzler of a car, Larry embarks on a community college education. On his first day he meets the two women who will change his middle-aged life. The first is free-spirited and fashion-forward fellow scooter rider, Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw); the second, his speech professor, Mercedes Tainot (Ms. Roberts).

The prof is going through a mid-life quandary of her own. She’s an expert on the politics of Shakespeare, a class that she can’t get enough students enrolled in to be able to teach. So she’s stuck teaching an 8am speech class that students don’t take all that seriously. And she goes home every night to a developing alcohol addiction and a husband (Brian Cranston) who quit his job as a professor to become a “new media writer,” but actually spends all day checking out busty beauty porn.

It would seem that the fundamentally-good-but-unhappy pair were destined to meet cute. But, in spite of the fact that Larry and Mercedes see each other three mornings a week, it takes them nearly an hour of screen time to do so. Meanwhile, Larry gets a Pretty Woman-esque makeover from Talia and her pals in the scooter gang. And it turns out that a less dorky haircut, non-khaki pants, and a wallet chain (are those things still in style even on young dudes?) are just what he needs to scoop up the teacher babe.

It’s at about the halfway point of Larry Crowne that boy finally really meets girl, when he offers her a ride on his scooter after she’s been left behind at a bus stop by her jerky hubby. The following conversation ensues:

Mercedes: You do realize that we’re going so slow a cat could knock us over.

Larry: Well, this is the first time I’ve driven anyone but myself. I want to make sure everyone arrives safely.

It’s an apt metaphor for the pacing of Mr. Hanks’ second big-screen directorial outing, which he also co-writes with My Big Fat Greek Wedding scribe and star Nia Vardalos. This film galumphs along slowly, making you wonder where it might eventually be going. Will Larry and Talia have a misguided fling? Will Larry discover that he ‘s got a real head for business (sort of hinted at in his economics class taught by George Takei) and help turn Lamar’s running garage sale into a super-successful retail company? Will he ever stop wearing that ridiculous wallet chain? The only thing you know for sure is that he’ll end up with Mercedes. And you know that only because she’s age-appropriate and played by Julia Roberts.

Bumper-sticker wisdom and Aerosmith tunes would have us believe that falling in love is hard on the knees. It must be out of concern for the already osteoporotic bones of their older audience that Hanks and Vardalos skip right over having their romantic leads do any “falling.” So much time is spent on Larry getting wacky advice from Lamar, new clothes from Talia, and comically menacing looks from her boyfriend Dell (Wilmer Valderrama) that the love story comes down to one scooter ride and an awkard, desperate kiss that’s funny to watch but lacks an ounce of real heat.

I just don’t understand why the duo didn’t click. Usually, onscreen chemistry is only this bad in a case of clash of the egos, where neither actor likes each other as much as they like themselves. But if Hanks wriggling around in a storage unit in tighty-whiteys or Roberts’s clumsy physicality (and beautifully un-Botoxed face) are any indication, vanity was hardly the problem for these two mega-watt stars.

Hanks plays Larry Crowne with the affably bewildered charm and everyman good looks that he brings to many of his successful leading-man roles. Meanwhile, my affection for Ms. Roberts is no secret (hey, I even liked Eat Pray Love) and is actually enhanced by the fact that she successfully gets the shrewish part of this character’s personality just right. But as loveable as Hanks and Roberts (and by extension, Larry and Mercedes) are, they just don’t go together.

Sort of like wallet chains and 50-year olds.