Larry Crowne and Me

Two actors on a scooter. Cool.

So I caught the Tom Hanks film Larry Crowne on cable this week and I have to say, it really had an impact on me. The thing is, the film itself isn't really anything to write home about. It is hardly up to par with the films that we know and love Hanks for and it certainly isn't going to win any awards. Julia Roberts phones it in and Bryan Cranston is wasted as a single dimension loser husband. It's just a predictable and safe little film that doesn't make anyone nervous or uneasy.

The reason I liked it was because of the titular character's interactions with the world around him. He is a walking example of how we should all interact with one another and with the world in which we live.

In other words, if we were all a little more like Larry Crowne, this country would be far more pleasant to inhabit.

Let me back up for a second. A week or so ago, I was driving somewhere...doing...something...and the car in front of me tossed a huge wadded up wrapper or bag of some kind out its window. As luck would have it, the car was also one of those God awful giant SUV's that guzzles gas by the tankful, getting 4 miles to the gallon and spewing enough smoke into the atmosphere to burn a softball sized hole in the ozone layer directly above New England.

Anyway, as I watched the litterbug in action, I had to wonder why. Doesn't the person driving that massive vehicle want to live in a nice place? Does he or she like how dirty wrappers piling up in the gutters makes the streets look? Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe the driver was creating some sort of living art, or thought that the addition of this piece of trash might gussy up the road just enough to bring the real estate prices up a modicum.

Better get that toxic paper out of your car before it melts you!

Maybe the paper was toxic when it came into contact with the faux leather seats inside the car, releasing a green poisonous gas which would turn anyone who came into contact with it into some sort of gelatinous blob.

Maybe he or she saved hundreds of lives.

Probably not, though. Probably it was just a bad person who couldn't wait until  they were home to toss out their trash properly. This brings me back to Larry Crowne.

Larry is a man who takes pride in everything he does. At the beginning of the film he works in a big box department store that is kind of an amalgam of WalMart and Target and despite his fellow employees' disdain for their jobs, he works hard and goes above and beyond because "it's the right thing to do." The film makes a point of emphasizing this quality of Larry, including him stopping more than once to pick up someone else's trash and throwing it away properly.

I think we all need to adopt this simple, yet rare attitude. Most of us know right from wrong. Now I am not making a plea for the world to just get straightened out through one small blog post. However, if we do something simple like picking up trash that we see on the ground, or at least not tossing it out our car window as we drive through a residential area, that's a start.