In the middle of Cameron Crowe’s “Aloha,” a character is revealed to have had an extra big toe accidentally stitched onto his own after a combat accident.
This illogical surgical snafu is emblematic of the film itself, a jumble of too many plots involving characters who almost never talk or act like real people. There are grand, romantic speeches that will endure forever from Crowe’s earlier work — “Jerry Maguire,” “Say Anything . . .” — but you can’t build an entire movie on them. Nobody wants two hours of “You had me at hello.”
Bradley Cooper’s Brian Gilcrest, a military man-turned-private contractor, is an identifiable relation of Maguire’s: “A brilliant, compelling, innovative, commanding wreck of a guy.” Back in his home state of Hawaii to service the expanding telecommunications footprint of his eccentric billionaire boss Carson Welch (Bill Murray, expertly playing Bill Murray), Gilcrest is assigned an Air Force escort, for reasons I’m still trying to work out, in the form of Emma Stone’s Capt. Allison Ng.
Stone wears her “Top Gun” flight suit and Ray-Bans like a champ, but she’s supposed to read as too-eager and dorky — and it just doesn’t fly (so to speak). “Can you think of a way to make ‘I’m a fighter pilot’ sound sexy?” she responds when asked why she’s single. Um, yes: Literally any way you say it, especially when you look like Stone.
But Gilcrest is momentarily blinded to Ng’s charms by his ex, Tracy (Rachel McAdams), now married to another pilot, Woody (John Krasinski, surprisingly hulking). They have a daughter (Danielle Rose Russell) and a precocious son (Jaeden Lieberher) obsessed with Hawaiian mythology, in a plot quirk that never really pays off.
Brian has lingering feelings, and Tracy’s marriage is in trouble, because Woody never talks — perhaps the worst thing you can say of someone in a Crowe movie, where nervous rambling doubles as foreplay.
Meanwhile, the increasingly dubious work mission involves convincing a native Hawaiian community to allow use of land and air space for a satellite launch. With the help of the “quarter Hawaiian” Ng, Gilcrest promises they absolutely won’t ever use the deal to put weapons in space. (Guess what happens next?)
The film alternates between shoving its confusing plot forward and dropping dialogue bombs that fizzle: “You’ve sold your soul so many times nobody’s buying anymore.” “Take those blue eyes, and go to her.” And, my favorite, “I got personal with you. I never get personal!” — the latter delivered by someone who’s nothing but personal from the start.
There are a handful of moments to relish: Murray and Stone memorably take to the dance floor for Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That.” Alec Baldwin bellows insults as a perennially irritated general. Krasinski and Cooper have an eye-contact-only “conversation” which Crowe amusingly subtitles.
But given its Hawaiian setting and soundtrack, “Aloha” mostly feels like a descendant of Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” — and a minor one at that.