Bit by bit our planet is being sold to ultrawealthy individuals. They drill, they frack, they drain lakes and aquifers to fill their Olympic-size pools—and in Cameron Crowe’s Aloha, one attempts to dispatch a satellite into space with potentially nefarious intent, and with the unwitting help of the U.S. military. The sky belongs to our imaginations, damn it, not to billionaire megalomaniacs. But all it takes is one man amid this crisis of conscience to save the world. Of course, it never hurts if he’s in love.
This has been said elsewhere, but it bears repeating: Aloha is a very odd, confusing, and convoluted movie. It’s shot weirdly. It’s edited bizarrely. It feels like something that’s been sliced and diced, with bits of film that were plot-pertinent left on the cutting-room floor. Even if Aloha were well made in a technical sense, it would still be a weird heap of patriotism, astronomy, and Hawaiian folklore, piled atop a pat and predictable love story. Its message is something like: the sky is magical, Hawaii is magical, and love is magical. It doesn’t convincingly communicate any of these things.
Directed by Cameron Crowe
