Renaissance man: "Larry Crowne"

If there's one multi-millionaire Hollywood megastar you could imagine making a credible stab at representing the plight of the squeezed American middle-classes, it would be the admirably ordinary Tom Hanks - and certainly it's encouraging, with Larry Crowne, Hanks's second offering as writer-director-star, to see the actor liberated from those ghastly Dan Brown adaptations he's been wasting his time with recently. Crowne himself is intended as a talisman of the credit crunch: a decent citizen, forever happy to aid his fellow man and pick up any litter he encounters along the way, he lives a contented life as a team manager in a large household goods store. All's going well until the top brass descend one day, like vultures, to hand him his pink slip for failing to matriculate college way back when - in effect, punishing our hero for his very ordinariness.

The precedent here - and the film Larry Crowne is destined to be compared unfavourably to - is Jason Reitman's Up in the Air. Yet Hanks is less inclined to test the perimeters of his star persona than Clooney (the closest he came to that was 2002's Road to Perdition, and hardly anyone turned out for it), and Larry Crowne simply doesn't address the loneliness and despair the earlier film managed to sneak into a very slick-looking entertainment. Larry - that name should be preceded by "happy as" - has a jolly neighbour (Cedric the Entertainer) in place to sell him the tools he'll need for his renaissance (a college prospectus, later a scooter for added mobility); upon his eventual enrolment, he makes lots of new chums, and the film turns into a middle-aged Hot for Teacher fantasy.

For, lo, Larry is assigned to a class taught by none other than Mercedes Tainot - or Julia Roberts, as this is, doing a better job of suggesting a jaded civil servant than Cameron Diaz managed in the recent Bad Teacher. Roberts has a couple of strong, strident scenes in front of her blackboard (one of the film's revelations: the actress has lovely, flowing handwriting), making good use of the tetchiness that has started to creep into her star persona with age, and she gives a monologue on the importance of confidence in public speaking that might even be said to be instructional. The remainder of the script, which Hanks co-wrote with My Big Fat Greek Wedding's Nia Vardalos, is - let's say - altogether less convincing in coming up with worthwhile supporting roles.

One of Larry's classmates is a gorgeous young thing (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who sends our man cutesy text messages during lectures, and - for no conceivable reason other than out of the innate goodness of her own adorable little heart - undertakes to give Larry and his apartment a comprehensive makeover, giving him a haircut, accessorising him with hipster spectacles and a scarf, and telling him "you're much cooler than you appear". Roberts has the savviest line in the movie, in wondering "What do men see in irritating free spirits?", but the scenes with the younger woman prompt more urgent and pertinent questions: does Tom Hanks really need this much affirmation at this point in his career? And, more importantly, do we?

As a viewing experience, Larry Crowne is never less than watchable, but it has too many of these reassurances and safety nets in place to be anything more besides. Hanks and Vardalos make Mercedes' decision to leave her husband easy by conceiving of him as a self-loathing writer who spends his afternoons eyeballing weirdly anachronistic online erotica. (Hanks's perennial sexlessness here extends to the entire film: he shares an awkward, curious doorstep kiss with Roberts, but that's as far as the central relationship goes.) Larry's final presentation to his class is dotted with close-ups of his adoring classmates, each having their own personal moment of revelation thanks to the speaker. (Again with the affirmation.)

And the film's idea of strategic foreclosure, such as the hero enters into, is almost literally a picnic: dump your bad debts on your bank, then sit back with your friends and neighbours on the sofa you've hauled out to your front lawn, enjoying some cinnamon-frosted eggs (?) while listening to a nice Tom Petty record. I doubt anyone will be going to Larry Crowne for the financial advice, but it bears as much relation to our present economic realities as Hanks's directorial debut That Thing You Do! did to rock 'n' roll, and - as a result - a film setting out to champion adult learning comes perilously close to insulting our intelligence. It's naggingly enjoyable, and - when she turns it on - Roberts is really pretty good indeed, but these are tough times, and we might legitimately ask or expect our entertainments to be tougher than Larry Crowne.

Larry Crowne is on nationwide release.