Larry Crowne

In this feel-good movie, Tom Hanks celebrates the ordinariness of American life

Larry Crowne was born in the 1950s, spent 20 years in the US navy, did not get a college degree, and has been laid off his job at UMart. The recession has hit him hard, but Larry travels light. He looks to the future and enrolls at a community college, where he ends up taking two courses, one on economics and the other on the art of informal speaking.

Larry Crowne has a predictable plot, uncomplicated people and uses no special effects. It has no agenda and does not debate the meaning of existence. Yet, it is an inexplicably charming movie about a side of the American people that we have completely lost touch with—their basic integrity, decency, kindness and sunny disposition.

‘The Ugly American’—a book, a movie and then an epithet for American arrogance—is a perception that remains unaltered since the 1960s, and a franchise-obsessed Hollywood that relentlessly shows Americans who save their nation and patronise the world reinforces the image. By deliberately eschewing extraordinariness of any kind in the depiction of his own character in Larry Crowne, director Tom Hanks seeks to celebrate ordinariness in American life.

Frank Capra’s characters from the Depression era—Mr Deeds, Mr Smith, John Doe—are further downsized to a Mr Crowne. But Larry does get lucky with his ‘informal speaking’ professor, an absolute darling called Mercedes (Julia Roberts), ironically rather formal herself. The movie is woefully short on drama, and at a certain point, the persona of the lead actors overrules the characters they play. So when Larry makes his final exam speech on how he joined the navy and saw the world, it is Tom Hanks holding forth and Julia Roberts grading him.

Which is great. Larry Crowne is a movie that makes you happy. The unfairness of life appears only when you look at Roberts—how can anyone be so beautiful?

About The Author

Ajit Duara