Aloha

Cameron Crowe's latest is a hybrid of screwball romance and magical realism. It's a tough recipe to pull off, and there are moments that don't work, but the happy surprise is just how well Crow and his cast do here.

Years ago, Brian (Bradley Cooper) and Tracy (Rachel McAdams) were a couple -- before Brian's ability to commit broke them up. Skip ahead thirteen years, when Tracy has married John (John Krasinski) and Brian, formerly a soldier and NASA engineer, has started working for a billionaire named Welch (Bill Murray) who has a keen (and slightly dangerous) interest in putting satellites in Earth's orbit. A year or so before, Brian made a mess of one of Welch's projects in Afghanistan and took a grenade for his trouble; now, after a long convalescence, Brian is back in the game because Welch needs his connections to Hawaiian leaders like Dennis "Bumpy" Kanahele (the controversial man plays himself) in order to further his goals.

Off Brian goes to Oahu. Who else lives there? Tracy, of course, whose husband flies planes for the Air Force. Tracy has two kids now, the younger of whom is obsessed with Hawaiian mythology and pegs Brian as the incarnation of the god Lono.

Someone else who flies planes -- fighter jets in this case -- is Allison (Emma Stone), a native who is one-quarter Hawaiian by birth (even though she looks nothing like it, but then again her character supposedly had a Swedish mother or something). The moment Emma sees Brian on the airfield -- where Brian and Tracy have an awkward reunion -- she's smitten with him. It takes Brian a while to return the favor, and in the meantime he creates a tsunami of jealousy in Tracy and John's marriage.

Mystical winds blow -- literally -- through this breezy film, which throws out some clunky weird science but balances it with well-judged metaphysical moments. Some will find this movie a charming delight; others just won't get it, or might even mistake it for Crowe channeling Wes Anderson. What it is, though, is Crowe taking some serious (if far out) propositions and thinking about them seriously -- with a lighthearted and generous glaze of silliness.

The Blu-ray release offers an in-depth featurette on the film's production (almost a video diary, covering the whole shoot), the Original Opening (twenty minutes lopped off the beginning that would have seriously mangles the film tonally had they not been excised), and an Alternate Ending (effective, but not as much as what Crowe opted to go with). There are also profiles of Kanehele and Hawaiian music star Ledward Kapana (who also makes an appearance as himself); deleted scenes, a gag reel, and a gallery (pretty standard stuff); and a short, kind of wonky little film essay narrated by Crowe on space exploration.

This is no "Almost Famous," but it doesn't have to be. It's a sweet film in its own slack key that'll scratch an itch for light, laughter, and what the Hawaiians call Ohana.