Larry Crowne
User Score
5.7 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 77 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 40 out of 77
  2. Mixed: 22 out of 77
  3. Negative: 15 out of 77

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  1. HarryLimeOne
    Jul 2, 2011
    0
    Conventionally dull. "Larry Crowne" attempts to make a statement about the economy, the times, and second time around" relationships,and film fails on almost every level., Straddled with a contrived and shallow script, the cast and crew struggles, and fails, to bring life to an empty vessel. Writer Nia Vardolos may be a "one race pony", but Hanks and Roberts can do so much better than this.
  2. understudyhero
    Jan 21, 2012
    0
    Never before has a movie been so lifeless and pointless.
    Nothing happens in this movie, it's a meet-cute scene dragged out for seven and a half hours (however long this movie was - it felt like ten days).

    This movie is made for people who can't be bothered with learning plot details or focus on characterizations. This movie is literally "Tom Hanks playing what we think Tom Hanks is really     like doing Tom Hanks like activities while occasionally that nice girl from the movie about that hooker shows up"

    It also has a manic pixie girl as a potential love interest misdirect. One you will not fall for because of the entirely not a threat boyfriend who doesn't even pose a speed bump to the plot . This is a movie for people who love all day hour long tv show marathons (like Law and Order.) You literally could come into this movie mid way through and pick up on it without knowing a single thing about it. My grandmother would have loved this movie.

    If you want to see a slightly more daring and enjoyable take on this please check out Will Farrel's Everything Must Go which examines a character at similar crossroads.    … Expand
  3. dubbleq
    Jul 5, 2011
    3
    Reasons to watch this movie-
    Your dumb
    Your braindead
    Your torturing yourself
    Your high
    Your drunk
    Your torturing yourself
    If you answered none of the above then don't go watch this movie.
  4. heyitsmegrif4
    Dec 31, 2011
    3
    Hey Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks you already know they'll be good and have chemistry. Yes they had chemistry, but they weren't funny, charming. They were just really boring leads. Which also lead to a boring movie which might have been better if it was in high school with teenagers which it felt like the whole time. I give this movie 29%
  5. bromsayswut
    Jul 9, 2011
    3
    The plot is a mess, the story is riddled with useless characters, and the movie as a whole is boring. I came into it thinking "Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, can't be bad." Well, it can.
  6. Shiira
    Jul 29, 2011
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. In "Discounted Dreams", the investigative journalist, on assignment at a west coast community college, in his capacity as a monitor, observes a predominant show of indifference among the gathering students in a remedial math class towards the instructor, who is, judging by his unmodulated voice, equally disengaged, not seeming to care one bit that his lecture on the rudiments of algebra is being received as white noise. Does it bother him, the auditor wants to know, that the students in the back-row were text-messaging, and worse, sleeping through his lecture on polynomials? Unapologetically, he answers in the negative. "That's their situation," "their responsibility," claims the untrained abcedary(a transplanted biology teacher), who isn't going to lose any sleep over his 45% passing rate. The burn-out is only there to collect a paycheck. At East Valley CC, the moviegoer catches Ms.Tainot in the midst of an existential crisis. On the first day of a new semester, resignation gets an early start, as the comparative literature major wonders aloud, "Do I make a difference?" It's a rhetorical question, of course, since the jaded educator knows she doesn't, not in a profession where at this level, half the students fail to graduate, so when Mercy counts only nine bodies in the room, there's no hiding her excitement over the morning class' prospective cancellation. It's the first time she smiles. Mercedes Tainot is a bad teacher. And unbeknownst to "Larry Crowne", a bad wife, too. Since instructors at two-year campuses don't have a research component to their job description like their PhD colleagues, Mercy, unhindered by split loyalties, is really in no position to call her novelist husband lazy, when all she's expected to do is teach. The screenplay, co-written by a female, skewers perception by vilifying the blocked writer for his Internet porn addiction, a relatively harmless transgression. Looking at their failed marriage objectively, without the illiberalism of hackneyed feminism, one could adjudge the slightly boozy wife as being unsupportive. That's fine; that's the film's prerogative to paint men in such broad strokes, but what's sloppy, and sometimes unforgivable about this slight comedy is how little it knows about the inner-workings, and economic fate that befalls community colleges right now. Foregoing authenticity, Larry Crowne, a victim of downsizing(and class warfare) at a big box store, enrolls in classes without taking the placement exam that is part and parcel for all incoming students. Even worse, despite all the budget cuts that greatly affect student services and class availability, Larry gets all his first choices, as suggested by a counselor, whom you know is a Hollywood movie counselor, since in real life, most advisers are too busy to approach students in the hallway. Also, questions like: What is Larry majoring in? or, "Does he want his old job back?" go unanswered. The film can't be bothered with details. Community college serves merely as a backdrop in order for Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts to meet-cute. Like most students at these schools, the screenplay has no ambition. It settles for being a rom-com. If that's the case, a more interesting variation on the theme would have been to position Mercy as the cougar, but instead, "Larry Crowne" flits around with the oft-used trope of the older man(normally a professor) and young coed, when the pretty(old) woman mistakenly diagnoses the fast friends as a couple. "Larry Crowne" gets one thing right about community colleges: the racial diversity. As a result, the film employs colorblind casting, assigning the role of the free spirit(the Zooey Deschanel type) to an African-American. Talia is not stereotypically black; she's not a single mother on welfare, a high school dropout, paying the price for getting pregnant with every minute of her waking hours, especially when she rides the bus at night to her dead-end job across town, a grind so taxing, she can't stay awake to do homework and prepare for upcoming tests. This hypothetical black girl, however, is no stereotype. This girl is real; her obstacles, a byproduct of inner-city life. As portrayed in the PBS doc, the black girl doesn't pass remedial math and will never be a vet tech. Talia quits too; she opens up a boutique. "Larry Crowne" puts an optimistic spin on the high dropout rate, suggesting that students move on to become entrepreneurs. As for the boyfriend, by group snapping, the film coyly suggests that he's a former gangbanger by evoking "West Side Story"(the song "Cool"), when the Sharks(Puerto Rican like Dell) and Jets(working-class white like Larry) get set to rumble. Here, the snapping is used as Larry's initiation into a gang of moped riders. It's not cute, just dishonest. Like the film's notion that the students learned something in Ms. Tainot's class. All she does is sit in the back, nursing her hangover.… Expand
  7. Ecclesiastes
    Mar 11, 2013
    0
    Some films sacrifice realism for action, or vice versa. This endless, pointless, mindless tripe somehow manages to be both as fanciful and as boring as anything I've ever seen. If you haven't left your house or seen a film in several years, maybe you'll be able to tolerate it. I couldn't.

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
41 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 41 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 22 out of 41
  3. Negative: 9 out of 41
  1. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    Jul 7, 2011
    25
    Larry Crowne is more than a missed opportunity. It's alarmingly, depressingly out of touch.
    Read full review
  2. New York Observer
    Reviewed by: Rex Reed
    Jul 5, 2011
    25
    Congenial is the word for Larry Crowne, but it's as flat as an ironing board.
    Read full review
  3. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    Jul 4, 2011
    40
    Larry Crowne is worryingly light on laughs, yet it never dares to worry too much about the plight of its central figure. [11 & 18 July 2011, p.100]
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