Aloha – 1/5 – Movie Reviews by Ry!
Aloha – 1/5 – Scripts is the most important part of any film. Writing something with decent driving themes and great characters is something that is hard to do. There are times when a script can be ‘too’ much, and dialogue heavy scenes that have no real cohesive thread can be daunting. Aloha is that film that has a lot of promise (and characters worth following), but there is way too much going on that is drowning out the experience. This film is the perfect example of writing too much is not always a good thing.
Premise: A military contractor returns to a place of familiarity, as he tries to reconnect with a long-ago love while falling hard for another.
The actors/actresses are a list of ‘who’s who’ in the film industry. There is a lot of them so if you want to reference them I suggest to look at the IMDB page for the list. I’ll just make note of the main three that are on the screen most the time:
Bradley Cooper – Brian Gilcrest
Emma Stone as Allison Ng
Rachel McAdams as Tracy Woodside
These three do a good job at being ‘serviceable’ with the script they have. There are times when you can ‘feel’ the emotion from them, but there just isn’t enough on screen to believe the characters. The chemistry between Cooper and Stone is trivial; making the audience to ‘believe’ there is a loving relationship there. With Cooper and McAdams; there is something that you can somewhat believe. You see something more raw and true to their chemistry, but it is still heavy handed (because of the script). For the rest of the cast; having big names doesn’t make the film any better. They are generic, one-dimensional and campy throughout the whole entire story. There are moments of ‘witty’ and ‘sarcastic’ situations; but it never lends itself to being truly charming.
The direction of this film is the perfect example of disjointed pacing and convoluted storytelling. From the beginning, you are ‘supposed’ to be carried through this film by the character and their interactions. As it is a ‘dialogue heavy’ film; it is left to the characters to create some kind of tonal focus. This would have been great if the script itself wasn’t pretentious and flooded with numerous ideas. There is something that is eerily pompous built into each character, which creates a concept where you don’t know how to see any kind of attachment to any of them. With this happening, the story never comes together, and there is no thorough plot line for what is happening in the film. There is no cohesion (from beginning to end), creating very uneven pacing and obvious plot holes. It’s so amazingly bad you eventually get to thinking what is the real purpose or meaning behind the story. Every genre film has a point of focus; and the ‘over writing’ of this characters drowns out any kind of point to be had in this story. There are ‘moments’ of family charm, relationship banter and emotional chords that pull at your hearty core, but then the film takes ‘unnecessary’ twists that are so blatantly forced, it takes away from the shock factor. The twists just add to the convenience of ‘connecting’ everything in the film. By the end, all ‘foreshadowing creates a the ‘perfect’ scenario (with some really good family moments) but it never brings the film to a point of excitement as you feel you’ve wasted your time.
The visuals are basic and the score adds nothing to the film.
Overall, Aloha is a disappointment. There is so much potential in the script and characters, that ‘overwriting’ kills any momentum the film has. I really don’t recommend this to anyone, but if you want to get a different perspective on the film, check it out as a matinee.