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Aloha, Emma Stone’s Worst Movie, Is Trending on Netflix
Not every filmography is full of winners, and that even applies to Academy Award-winner Emma Stone. In 2015, before her Best Actress wins for 2016’s La La Land and 2023’s Poor Things, Stone starred in Cameron Crowe’s Aloha. Stone plays an Air Force pilot named Allison Ng, a character infatuated with space and a surprising love interest for Bradley Cooper’s Brian Gilcrest. Aloha recently landed on Netflix, where it’s quickly rising through the top movie charts as people are tuning in to discover – or perhaps re-discover – Crowe’s controversial dramedy.
Aloha has a 20% score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, and it doesn’t fare much better among audiences as that number only rises to 29%. That puts it just above 2010’s Marmaduke and 2013’s Movie 43 – films with a 9% and 5% rating from critics, respectively – as Stone’s worst film among critics. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly what went wrong; it’s hard to envision a world where a film directed by Crowe starring Cooper, Stone, John Krasinski, Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, and Bill Murray can flop like this. It’s been a long time since Jerry Maguire, and Crowe’s filmography has been largely up and down since the turn of the millennium. You’d be hard-pressed to find Aloha on any ranking of Crowe’s best films. Aloha vastly underperformed with a gross of just $26.3 million worldwide on a reported budget somewhere between $37 and $52 million.
To be fair, Aloha is quite a mess and can be tough to follow at times. However, if you’re going into it hoping for a good performance from Stone, she delivers. The relationship between Cooper, Stone, and McAdams, the latter of whom plays Cooper’s ex-wife, is the highlight of the movie. The subplot involving Bill Murray’s character trying to put a satellite into space is not all that important, and it feels like a waste of having Murray in the first place, since he’s not given a lot to do.
Letterboxd Users Hate the Movie, But Still Love Emma Stone
Stone is rarely, if ever, the weak link of any given movie, and that’s the case here. Many of the recent reviews of Aloha on Letterboxd have users highlighting her performance as a standout, and the cast in general, while noting that the film’s story is what tanks it. The most frequent complaints have to do with the nonsensical plot, while only Stone and a wacky telepathy scene involving Krasinski and Cooper consistently earn praise. Overall, it has a poor score on Letterboxd with just a 2.2 average rating, putting it among some of the worst on the platform.
There was a lot of backlash surrounding Stone’s character at the time of release. Crowe was accused of whitewashing the character, who is part Hawaiian and Chinese. The filmmaker responded to criticisms on his blog:
“Thank you so much for all the impassioned comments regarding the casting of the wonderful Emma Stone in the part of Allison Ng. I have heard your words and your disappointment, and I offer you a heartfelt apology to all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice. As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud ¼ Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one.”
At the time of this writing, Aloha is Crowe’s most recent feature film. The only thing he’s been attached to since then is a documentary on David Crosby that he produced. The misfire hasn’t had an impact on Stone, however, as she went on to win two Best Actress Oscars since its release.
Aloha
is streaming now on Netflix.
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