Larry Crowne
{4.5/5} “They call them smart phones, but only dummies use them in my class.”
Larry Crowne, released in 2011
I started watching Black Swan, which has many fans, but it wasn’t doing it for me so I didn’t finish it. Instead I watched Larry Crowne starring Tom Hanks, who also directed, and Julia Roberts. Other people you know who have fun parts are Cedric the Entertainer, Wilmer Valderrama, Bryan Cranston, and George Takei.
It seems to me that if you watch the trailer and think this is a movie you’ll like then you’ll like it, and if you don’t then you won’t. There’s no bad guy, there are no explosions, it’s just a nice movie.
Larry (Hanks) has lost his retail job, even though he does it very well, because he didn’t attend college. After attempting and failing to find another job, he decides to go to college. The two classes we see him in are speech and economics, both of which turn out to be important. Larry has a thing for Mercedes (Roberts), his speech teacher, but of course it’s not appropriate for a teacher to date one of her students.
It’s implied that Mercedes is a great teacher because all of her students learn to give great speeches. The main complaint I have is that we never see what makes Mercedes a great teacher. This is a common complaint I have about movies where a teacher has a prominent role — the exception being Freedom Writers with Hilary Swank.