Coming 15 years after That Thing You Do!, Tom Hanks's second, confident outing as a feature director finds him co-writing a lighter-than-air trifle with old family friend Nia Vardalos, who's made nothing but awful films since initially charming audiences with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Hanks also stars as the recently downsized Larry Crowne, a likeable loser who enrolls in junior college to start anew, and it's there he's befriended by an amiable, but less appealing cast of students than those sharp comic creations on NBC's Community. That crew is rarely subjected to plots as sentimental as this one, which finds scooter-riding Larry falling for his boozy, bad teacher, Mercedes Tainot. Breezily played by Julia Roberts, she turns him on with her still-winning smile, while he partially earns his A+ by teaching her how to turn off the annoying voice on her car's GPS, a voice provided by . . . Vardalos. Too bad her voice wasn't silenced from the start.
