A romantic comedy with little romance. A commentary on the private takeover of the military and space. An indictment of how native peoples are taken advantage of by a big government. Yes, that it is all one movie, Cameron Crowe’s ALOHA. Crowe wrote and directed this mess. He needs someone to review his scripts. I’ll try to explain this, but it’s kind of unfathomable. Bradley Cooper is a washed up military contractor. He got seriously wounded in Afghanistan and got dumped by his boss, a kind of evil version of Elon Musk or Richard Branson (capably played by Bill Murray). Now he has some kind of relationship/expertise that requires him to return to Hawaii and negotiate with a native King about moving some bones. Then he meets up with two women as soon as he arrives at Hickam Air Force base. His ex-flame (Rachel McAdams) and a gung-ho Air Force Captain (Emma Stone). The pilot who flew him to Hawaii (John Krasinski) is married to McAdams. Stone’s character is one quarter Hawaiian and her name is Alison Ng. Yeah, they got the whitest actress you can think of to play a biracial fighter pilot. So, Cooper is a smooth talking, earnest womanizer. McAdams is fed up with her husband (Kransinski is probably the best thing in the movie) because he never talks to her. Stone is ambitious, but ambitious about what? Still don’t know. There is also a lot of talk about Hawaiian myth which flies by so fast that I really didn’t get much of what was happening. There are occasional laughs, some clever banter and non of it flows together. It’s like three different plots all fighting for dominance. An MMA of storylines. All we need is Rhonda Rousey to drop in and beat the crap out of all three and be done with it. It ends (mercifully) sweetly. There’s some more minor stuff going on, like McAdams’ oldest daughter was really fathered by Cooper, though no one know, yet Krasinski seems to know. Danny McBride is a bro-Air Force Colonel. Alec Baldwin is an angry General. Crowe’s last good movie was ALMOST FAMOUS. That was 15 years ago. Hopefully after this mess of a movie, we’re not saying aloha to Crowe’s career. — Alan Yudman