Who is this vaguely familiar face we see before us playing Larry Crowne, a supermarket manager who is made redundant and resolves to perk himself up by going to community college and having a more trendy haircut?
Can it be Tom Hanks, the Hollywood familiar who became the first actor in 50 years to be awarded back-to-back Oscars in the Nineties for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump?
His face is now like a mask at Madame Tussauds and the well-known smile is a strange kind of rictus.
I have no idea what he has done to himself but since he produces, writes and directs this
film as well as acting in it, perhaps
it's just make-up concealing understandable exhaustion.
The net result is a perfectly pleasant watch if you are not too cynical about the slightly sentimental lessons it tries to give hard-pressed Americans on how to survive the recession. And there's Julia Roberts in there too, as a teacher with a frightful husband who ends up fancying Hanks rotten and inspiring her recalcitrant class to hold their heads up high despite everything.
She is the best thing in Larry Crowne, being a more confident comedian than you might suppose and still looking pretty enough to eat, while Hanks produces a slow-burning portrait of a shy man getting himself a new life.
Among the young people who take him to their bosom is British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who inducts him back towards youthfulness with a firm hand.
She's charming and irritating at more or less the same time but makes her mark. So do Pam Grier and Cedric the Entertainer in smaller parts.
Hanks as writer and director seems a bit more of a problem, since the screenplay misses a good few tricks and the direction frequently renders scenes too long, taking positively ages to wrap things up.
Larry Crowne
Cert: 12A
