Aloha

A military contractor (Bradley Cooper) lands in Hawaii with his career under some unspecified cloud; now he's serving as liaison between NASA, an eccentric billionaire (Bill Murray) and local natives, while being distracted by an old girlfriend (Rachel McAdams) and his gung-ho Air Force minder (Emma Stone). Writer-director Cameron Crowe pounds another nail in the coffin lid of his career, with a story that (like the dismal Elizabethtown) takes place on some strange planet that exists only in his head. The movie is a lumpy, half-baked mix of Hawaiian mythology, soggy soap opera, strained magic realism and hard-nosed politics. A decent cast (John Krasinski and Alec Baldwin also get stuck in the goo) gamely goes along, but little rings true, and suddenly Jerry Maguire is looking like a very long time ago. J.L.