I went into the movie theatre with high hopes for Aloha, a romance movie backed by three A-team actors: Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams and Bradley Cooper. Unfortunately, my expectations fell through 30 minutes into the film.
Aloha is a film that’s part-romantic comedy and part-treatise on subjects like the monopoly of space weaponry development by multi-billionaires and the aspirations of a less-developed population (Hawaiians). Being a romance fanatic with an avid interest in socio-political topics, I thought this would be the 2015 film for me. Sadly though, the best ingredients of the movie weren’t put together nicely. For me, it felt like several films at once, crammed together and sped up, resulting in a narratively confusing plot. In a bad way, you can see the editing of the film.
Within individual scenes, there are cutaways on different camera angles that disrupt the flow of dialogue. The development of the entire story was not cleverly planned out as well. There were numerous times with big developments in the story that made me go “Huh?” In fact, it took me a while to grapple and comprehend with the direction that the movie was headed towards.
Aloha features Brian Gilcrest, a former military man who has hit bottom, personally and professionally, and must return to Hawaii to right some wrongs. Bradley Cooper stars as Gilcrest, who nearly died in a missile attack in Afghanistan. He now works for billionaire Carson Welch (Bill Murray), who requires him to launch a satellite and negotiate with the native Hawaiians.
Coincidentally, Gilcrest reconnects with his former girlfriend, Tracy, (Rachel McAdams) in Hawaii. Tracy seems to have a contented marriage life with introvert Woody (John Krasinski) –until they don’t, suddenly.
In the meantime, Air Force pilot, Alison Ng (Emma Stone) has been assigned to Gilcrest as his watchdog. Captain Ng is hard-charging and uptight and all business –until she isn’t, suddenly.
In an abrupt twist of story plot, Gilcrest finds that he has fallen head over heels with Ng. However, he has other priorities to fulfill before he can be all lovey dovey with Ng. For one, he must do his bidding to Carson, who has employed him to conduct the satellite launch into space. This becomes an uphill task when Ng starts suspecting the launch is more than just a ubiquitous satellite launch – it turns out the launch is a part of Carson’s plans to weaponise air space.
So you see, there’s a lot of stuff going on, with abrupt story developments. Don’t be duped by the trailer – this short clip melodramatised the love triangle between Emma, Rachel and Bradley but it wasn’t as drama-rama as it turned out to be. Even if the romantic comedy part didn’t work out, I had expected the subject on space weaponisation to be amplified. Sadly, both ingredients were not even present. What more can you expect from this movie?
Watch the trailer here:
