Episode 61 -  Aloha

Aloha (2015) 

www.imdb.com/title/tt1243974/ - Internet Movie Data Base
www.justwatch.com/us/movie/aloha- Where To Stream
https://amzn.to/4w0hONI - Amazon 

I deliberately did not look up the movie Aloha before watching it.  I knew nothing about the plot, who was cast, who directed, when it was made, and certainly none of the cultural appropriation controversy.  I was hoping that might help me to review it charitably.

So, this is me being charitable.  I was underwhelmed.  For a movie with so many noteworthy actors, it just didn't hold my attention.  It felt like it didn't know what kind of movie it was supposed to be.  IMDB says:

"A celebrated military contractor returns to the site of his greatest career triumphs and reconnects with a long-ago love while unexpectedly falling for the hard-charging Air Force watchdog assigned to him."

Which tells me almost nothing about it.  Wikipedia lists it as a romantic comedy, and, sure, the storyline of the main character, Brian, and one of the two female leads, Allison, follows the structure of a rom-com.  The problem is that the rest of the movie is, like ... a military espionage film?  In the setting of a rom-com?  I kept wanting this to be dramatic or action-packed, and instead it kept being all rom-commie.

Brian is currently a military contractor, a civilian, but he once had a celebrated military career that ended with some shadowy deals in Afghanistan.  He has been rehired by a former boss, a billionaire entrepreneur named Carson, to come to Hawaii and broker a deal with the native islanders for access to some land where the billionaire wants to build a privately funded space center that will launch a privately funded satellite into space.  

Brian has personal connections with the Hawaiian nationalist leader and titular head of state of the group Nation of Hawai'i (played by the real king), so apparently that's why he's the only person who can do this job.  But it's actually his "watchdog", the air force liaison assigned to babysit him, with her "1/4 Hawaiian" heritage and doe-eyed native spiritual idealism, that actually wins over the king.

While Brian is apparently failing at his job, we are all distracted by the fact that his ex-girlfriend, who he gets along with, lives on the island with her pilot husband and 2 kids.  Brian gets along with everyone in the family, being independent friends with the husband and charming the kids with his personality and shared interests.

This is, I believe, where people think the poly stuff comes up, but I'll get back to that in a moment.

So, Brian is supposed to talk the islanders into giving up access to some land for this space center, which he does by trading free cell service for the community, giving back some of the land that was stolen from them (no clue how a private contractor could make that kind of deal, but whatevs), and promising that there will be no weapons in the sky.

Then he and his liaison hook up.  Then she learns that the satellite is going to be carrying a nuclear weapons payload and that Brian knows about it and lied to the Hawaiians about no weapons in the sky so she breaks up with him.  THEN, he suddenly discovers that, as the launch is imminent and can't be stopped, the Chinese are attempting to hack into the satellite's code to prevent the launch so now Brian is not just a former soldier, former shady mercenary, and diplomatic negotiator, but a high end computer programmer too because he's the ONLY ONE in this whole operation who can stop the hacker before the launch.

Brian and his now disillusioned watchdog get hauled off to the space center just in time for Brian to type furiously on a keyboard for a moment and kick the hacker out just seconds before the launch.  

The satellite launches successfully, his very young and idealistic hookup partner is very sad, and Brian decides that her opinion of him matters more than anything else so he ... Zooms with a hacker buddy of his right there in the control room and verbally orders him to upload "every sound file that has ever existed" onto the satellite, causing it to, I dunno, push sound waves out of the satellite which make it start spinning, start blasting snippets of recognizable movie soundbites and theme music into the control room, then suddenly stop spinning, then explode.

Because that's how sound and audio data work.

So everyone in the control room turn around to look at Brian and Allison, who are just standing there smiling over sabotaging a billion dollar science project, and then they just ... leave.  The billionaire confronts Brian outside but they just throw a few words at each other before Brian continues his exit.  He pauses to break up (again) with Allison because he is now "toxic" and he doesn't want her association with him to ruin her piloting career.  

But almost immediately he gets returned to Hawaii where the general, who previously threatened to prosecute him for sabotaging the project (but didn't, for some reason), the general congratulates Brian on uncovering the illegal nuclear weapons plan and thanks him for "making [them] all look good", because ... that's how espionage and privateering work.

Nothing about this plot makes sense, and that would be fine if it had been a cheesy Mission Impossible-style action film.  Nothing about those make sense either, but at least they're filled with car chases and explosions and physics-defying stunts.

But this was a fucking ROM-COM!  Or, I guess, it was a rom-dram, since it wasn't actually funny at all and the whole "rich old white men putting nuclear weapons in space aimed at America" thing was, dramatic?

So, let's get to the romance, since this is a poly review.

Brian has an ex-girlfriend named Tracy.  They seem to be very good friends, although they haven't actually spoken since Brian ghosted her 13 years ago.  Tracy is married to Woody, a pilot who seems to be friends with, or have some kind of history with, Brian.  Allison is assigned to Brian as the military liaison so she follows him around everywhere.

At first, Brian doesn't even notice Allison, like literally ignores her, turns his back on her, refuses to even acknowledge her presence when she's speaking directly at him.  But then he starts to pay attention when she manages to get through to the island King when he seems to be failing.

After the negotiations, Brian and Allison have dinner with Tracy and Woody (and their kids).  Everyone seems to get along.  It's one big happy family made up of a couple and a family of four.  Literally nothing non-monogamous happens here.  Tracy and Brian have a moment of connection where she reminds him that he ghosted her ages ago, but it's otherwise just a family and a couple hanging out over dinner.  My family had plenty of nights like this - my parents, me and my sister, and whatever couple friends of my parents came over so that my parents could talk to people their own age for a change.

Probably, nobody who dined at our house once dated my mom, seeing as how she met my dad in high school and none of their friends after marriage went back that far.  But lots of monogamous people manage to stay friends with their exes, especially if work brings them in contact with each other and they have decent social skills.

So then, the next night, Brian and Allison are at a military Christmas party and for some reason, Brian ends up falling for Allison here.  So they hookup that night and have some intimate pillow talk where Brian seems to let his guard down a little.  So, a dude has social contact with his ex-gf and also hooks up with some new chick, and they can all hang out together and have dinner.  

Sorry, but that's not polyamory.  That's pretty normal monogamy. I know a lot of polys like to think that we invented good relationship communication and all, but we didn't.  Monogamists with healthy boundaries and good communication skills all over the world, and across generations, have been able to date, break up, and stay friends while beginning and maintaining relationships with other people.

"But Joreth!" you might say, "what about that thing you said in the last review about being more willing to call something poly-ish if it had loving platonic relationships than if it was just lots of sex partners?  Don't these 4 people who care about each other but don't have sex count?"

I'm gonna say no here, because, again, poly people did not invent forming connections or even blended families.  Monogamists have been successfully building extended, intentional families of their own forever.  

That's not a new or novel thing.  Hell, the fact that it's not new or novel is usually an argument that POLYS use to defend polyamory.

Throughout the history of humanity, people have always formed connections, and extended family groups.  We are a social species.  It's a defining feature of our very species.  Even when the US in particular *tried* to isolate  people into nuclear family groups and discontinued the acceptance of multi-generational households and extended family homes, we still couldn't propaganda community out of us.  We splintered down to the monogamous parents and their children, but then those parents went off and joined church groups, bowling leagues, book clubs, sewing circles, bridge groups, ladies who lunch - all manner of methods to add back in additional connections to the monogamous nuclear family.

So, no, 2 monogamous couples who are friends with each other do not get to claim poly-ish status just because one from each couple used to be their own couple more than a decade ago.

SPOILER:

Oh, but what about the "surprise twist" at the end, you might ask?  I'm gonna spoiler it for you, so if you don't want to hear it, skip [to the last paragraph].  Brian does some math regarding how long ago he ghosted Tracy and how old her oldest child is.  Then Tracy confirms it.  Then Woody acknowledges it and, after confirming that Brian did not, in fact, have sex with Tracy at any point after Tracy married Woody, he embraces Brian.  Then the child acknowledges it and embraces Brian.  So, surely this counts as a poly family, right?

Nope.  Not to me it doesn't.  Again, polys did not invent the blended family.  Monogamists have been navigating blended families forever.  This is way closer to a divorced and remarried blended family.  There is no indication anywhere that Brian is going to move in and become part of their family in any way that differs from the way a divorced dad might be connected to his ex-wife's new family.  Tracy and Woody are still monogamous, Brian and Allison are still monogamous, and Brian and Tracy are exes with a shared kid.

I might call that a poly analogue, as I've discussed in other reviews and on my blog.  I frequently use my sister as an example when I point out to people who don't understand polyamory that pretty much nothing about polyamory is unique to polyamory.  She was a single teen mom who eventually got married and had a second kid (not in that order) with her husband, and she had all kinds of things in common with us - a whole bunch of names on the "allowed to pick up from school" list, none of whom were the kid's dad, dating while parenting, intentional family of other adults who helped co-parent (like me, the live-in auntie) and who supported her through school and working while parenting, etc.

But the whole point of a poly analogue is to highlight that what we do is really not unique to polyamory, it's nothing new or weird or different, because it's the same shit that everyone else is doing.  The ONLY thing that could be said to be unique to polyamory, or at least unique to a certain class of non-monogamy that includes polyamory, is that we have romantic lovers who have other romantic lovers at the same time and we embrace each other's other romantic lovers rather than exclude them, hide them, deny them, or tolerate them.  At least, we do all that on paper - real feelings might differ sometimes.

So Aloha *might* be a poly analogue.  But that just means that it's not poly - it's monogamy, just monogamy doing something that monogamy does that just happens to kinda resemble something that polyamory does, only without the, y'know, polyamory part.

If Brian and Tracy maintained a *romantic* bond with each other (with or without sex), rather than a *familial* bond, then I would say this was poly because Tracy would be a hinge in a Vee with her husband and her babydaddy.  But that's not what's happening here.  This is just a regular old monogamously blended family.  Told in the style of a rom-dram, set against the background of an espionage action film, without any action.  And a whole lot of cultural appropriation, whitewashing, and using indigenous folks as props.

If you can get past that last bit, the movie is still just kinda ... meh.  Watch it if you want.  I mean, the acting was good, but the rest of the movie failed in the execution of a coherent story.  It's such a shame, too, because I really like pretty much all of the actors in this film.  This may be one for the Ensemble Curse - the more big names you have attached to a film, the higher the likelihood it has of sucking.  Maybe watch it if you can multi-task, at least that way you won't have completely wasted 2 hours on "meh".