14 Days of Free Film Challenge - Day One, Larry Crowne

It's taken me long enough, but I've finally joined Blockbuster. My new house is closer to one and at the moment they're offering one film a night for fourteen nights for free. Sounds good to me, so I have accepted their challenge.

For my first rental, I picked Larry Crowne, not because I really wanted to see it but because my mum had mentioned wanting to see it and it's the weekend so I thought I'd better keep her happy.

In this film,Tom Hanks plays a hard-working guy who loves his job, until he's fired because he never went to college. Suddenly at a loss as to what to do with his life and how to afford to keep living, he joins a college to learn economics and 'The Art of Informal Remarks', taught by Julia Roberts. Basically, as you'd expect, he gets more confident and they fall in love.

That's basically it. As my mum put it "You could write down what happened in that film on the back of a postage stamp". (Although she liked it more than The Descendants, which she described as "that stupid film we saw on Tuesday).

Nevertheless, Larry Crowne was a sweet film that didn't require any thought to enjoy. Although Tom Hanks was good in this film, it would be nice to see him getting some better roles. He's done some really good films in the past, but this makes it seem that, if he keeps on getting parts of this type, he's just going to end up playing peoples' sweet granddad as he gets older, and he's better than that.

I'm not a big Julia Roberts fan, but her character was a bit of an idiot in this film anyway, so she didn't bother me too much.

So, overall a sweet, easy film with a simple storyline. A nice, gentle start to my 14 Days of Free Film. Now off to Blockbuster to choose the next.