'Aloha' is a genial but tepid romantic comedy

'Aloha' stars Bradley Cooper as a defense contractor who attempts to make a deal with indigenous islanders to approve the island as a launching pad for a billionaire-funded space satellite. He also reunites with an old flame (Rachel McAdams).

Hawaii is always nice to look at. That’s about the best thing I can say for “Aloha,” Cameron Crowe’s genial but tepid romantic comedy starring Bradley Cooper as defense contractor Brian Gilcrest and Emma Stone as Allison, the Air Force pilot assigned to watch out for him as he massages a deal to approve the island as a launching pad for a billionaire-funded space satellite. The billionaire, played with extra smarm by Bill Murray, is no peacenik – his real goal is to weaponize the heavens in the process of owning them.

These Space Age machinations don’t really jibe with the film’s romantic core, which involves Brian’s reunion with Rachel McAdams’s Tracy, an old flame. She is now married to a pilot (John Krasinski), a strong-and-silent type who is so nonverbal that, in the film’s best moment, the meaning of his muteness is rendered in subtitles. Crowe is deft at keeping the various plots spinning, but there are too many of them, and they don’t intersect pleasingly. Grade: C+ (Rated PG-13 for some language including suggestive comments.)