LARRY CROWNE
A breezy midlife comedy with serious moral problems.
Should You Watch It?
LARRY CROWNE is an amiable, funny film about beginning again after losing a job. Larry’s decision to attend community college leads to new friendships, practical changes, and a fresh direction. The movie’s well-developed characters and positive central figure give it genuine warmth.
The cost is moral confusion. The film includes an affair, divorce, an inappropriate student-teacher relationship, pornography, drunkenness, and other troubling content. Its worldview suggests that people can create their own moral codes rather than receive moral truth from God.
If you are an adult who can exercise discernment and discuss those ideas critically, LARRY CROWNE has enough humor and human feeling to merit a viewing. For children and young teens, choose something else.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESLarry Crowne is a cheerful, middle-aged divorced man who unexpectedly loses his job at a local superstore. Hoping to keep that from happening again, he enrolls in community college, buys a used scooter, and begins changing his finances and daily life.
At school, Larry meets Talia, the carefree leader of a scooter group, and Mercedes Tainot, a communications teacher facing serious problems in her marriage. As Larry’s new life takes shape, he must navigate friendship, attraction, and difficult choices.
Is It Any Good?
Three stars means LARRY CROWNE is enjoyable but uneven. The film has many funny moments and very good character development, especially in its portrait of Larry as a positive, genial man who keeps smiling through hardship.
Its main weakness is structural. The movie has no clear, overarching plot line and feels more like a breezy glimpse into a year of Larry’s life than a complete story with a definite direction. Still, the characters and comic elements give it enough appeal to make the journey worthwhile for discerning adults.
The Worldview
LARRY CROWNE presents self-reinvention as a largely positive goal. Larry responds to unemployment by pursuing education, adjusting his budget, and making practical changes. His genial nature and perseverance are among the film’s strengths.
The film’s moral vision is more troubling. Its strong pagan worldview includes feng shui and suggests that people can create their own moral codes. The story also includes an affair, divorce, and an inappropriate student-teacher relationship without providing a clear biblical framework for evaluating those choices.
The film understands that hardship can become an opportunity for change, but it does not consistently ground that change in truth received from God. Scripture gives a different direction: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Content Summary
Strong pagan worldview, with mentions of feng shui, suggests people can create their own moral codes; six obscenities (including one “f” word), two profanities and crude comments about female chest; no violence; kissing and groping, pornographic images of scantily clad women in suggestive poses, man speaks about his addiction to pornography and says “I am just an ordinary guy, doing ordinary guy things”; upper male nudity and man changes and is seen in his underwear, and images of scantily clad women; alcohol use and drunkenness; no smoking, but implied marijuana use; and, lying, affair, divorce, inappropriate student/teacher relationship, swindling.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Larry responds to hardship by making practical changes. How can perseverance and wise stewardship honor God during a difficult season?
Proverbs 21:5 · Colossians 3:23The film suggests people can create their own moral codes. Why does biblical faith teach that God, rather than personal preference, defines right and wrong?
Isaiah 5:20 · Micah 6:8Larry faces a choice involving attraction and another person’s broken marriage. What does it look like to treat people with purity and honor?
1 Thessalonians 4:3–5 · Philippians 4:8The story portrays starting over after failure. Where does Scripture direct us to find genuine newness of life?
2 Corinthians 5:17 · Lamentations 3:22–23The Final Word
LARRY CROWNE offers adults a warm, funny look at starting over, with characters worth meeting and a plot that never fully comes together. Its sexual material and self-made morality require serious discernment. For discerning adults, it is WORTH THE TRIP — ADULTS ONLY. Families looking for a cleaner choice can begin here:.
