Oh, it's a suckerpunch. Hanlon, God love him, neglects to go into detail about Crowne's firing, which is wrought with liberal elite condescension and is, therefore completely laughable in all the wrong ways.
SPOILER ALERT THAT'S ACTUALLY IN SEVERAL REVIEWS I'VE READ.
The store he works at is called UMart, as Hanlon discloses.
It's obviously Wal-Mart, and we can tell that they treat their employees like flaming bags of crap.
The break room is a couch in the store room -- which rings totally false. I've worked retail. And it sucks horribly. But we had breakrooms. With, like, TV's. And soda machines and bad coffee. It's clear that most of the employees hate it at UMart. But not the irrepressible Larry Crowne, goshdarnit. He loves it. Lives for it.

So, they fire him because they say that without a college degree he's unpromotable. Which makes. No sense.

They justify the ridiculous policy by saying that they can't offer him anything more, and they don't believe in standing in the way of his career advancement...he's hit a ceiling.

in reality, Wal-Mart -- er, UMart -- would love an employee like Crowne, who's good for morale and is unpromotable. And that's assuming that Wal-Mart -- dammit! UMart -- would even have such a policy.

I find it very hard to believe that such a policy would exist at a place like UMart. I worked retail, where I often reported to people without degrees. It's a bogus, bullcrap excuse to get the character fired and throw a suckerpunch while they're at it.

Mildly diverting movie. Roberts is good, her character is interesting. Hanks' Crowne is just dull and too absurdly likable. He has very little arc to speak of. The story gains some steam by virtue of the likable characters, and Roberts' storyline, but this is the type of movie that you skip now. Skip on DVD. Skip on cable.

Then, in ten years, maybe you'll accidentally catch it on TBS, and you'll be pleasantly surprised at best.

Dismissive is the correct word, and exactly what I was going for.
It's a joke that only I would get, but it seemed funny to me to be dismissive about a movie like Platoon, which, even though I'm not the biggest fan, did in fact change the face of the Vietnam War movie. Like it or not, it is not the kind of movie one would normally ho-hum, or, dismiss. So I did.
Hey -- I never said I wasn't a snarky jerk.

I just realized that, too.
What happened was I saw the title on the IMDB page, and instantly dozed off for a good five hours. By the time I woke up, I continued with the column and forgot to go back and fix it.
Cam

I don't dislike Platoon, nor do I claim to in the post.
There are scenes that I like, the performances are uniformly good-to-kinda-great, the soundtrack is pretty awesome, and the moments of bonding between the soldiers are quite moving.
I blew it off, as you say, because in my opinion (maybe one not as valid as yours) when the axe a filmmaker has to grind becomes larger than the story he's trying to tell, the movie suffers. The sparks from Stone's axe are in nearly every frame of the movie.

That was pretty moronic. My bad. Aliens should have merited a mention, and could even bump one of the other four of my "nominees" on any arbitrary day.

Thanks for pointing out my grievous error.

Cam

It was a great year, no doubt. This whole series is about the oscars, year by year. And when I look at this list I'm reminded more and more that the 1994 series was a misfire. Thanks for rubbing it in, lol.

Nice list and I actually cut out a mention of Mr. Mom, just to cut down word count. But agree to disagree on Terms. I can't pass it up when I flip past it.
Cam

Honestly, you are probably that it's too much. My disdain for critics would have gone unmentionted forever had not the most recognizable one on the planet not ventured into political commentary after scolding Medved for doing the same. His commentary reveals even more his desperation for validation the lib elite, so I vented, then submitted, and Nolte posted.

You botha me 'bout a steak?!

<sigh> My bad, dude.