The theme of Larry Crowne (as played by Tom Hanks, who also directed) is I guess re-inventing yourself for the better. And Larry was forced to do so after being let-go from his job at U-Mart for lacking a college education.

So what he does is go back to school and there he meets Julia Roberts, who plays his Speech 217 teacher. Larry also takes an economics course taught by an hilarious George Takei and also meets a fellow student, Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who helps loosen Larry up wardrobe wise and embrace the scooter lifestyle.

While I did find Larry Crowne entertaining, the script was by Tom Hanks and Canadian Nia Vardalos was a bit filmsy that didn’t follow through on some plot points. Like I wonder what is Larry doing in college, what is he planning on doing with the courses he is taking? Also, the students are made up of the stereotypes that you see in college-set films. In fact, all the characters are stereotypes that you see a lot in movies like Larry Crowne. For example, the sassy fellow professor friend of Robert’s Ms. Tainot, her smarmy husband who makes us realize that Larry is much suited to her and Larry’s neighbours where they are his best friends/family.

There are some laughs though and it is Roberts that pulls it off. It looks like she is having the time of her life in this movie. Her chemistry with Tom Hanks also makes this film work.

One of the things that I found refreshing about Larry Crowne was to have a film targeted at adults over 30 amongst all the action-packed, super hero movies, robots in disguise fare that is in movie theatres now.