The image of Tom Hanks tootling along on his scooter pretty much captures the spirit of Larry Crowne : this laid-back study ( comedy might be too strong a term) putters along at a sensible speed, observing its world in a pleasantly upbeat way. Hanks not only stars in the film, but also directs--his first feature after That Thing You Do! --and cowrites with Nia Vardalos, so it's not a difficult leap to assume the mood of the pictures stems from his nice-guy persona. Larry is a recently divorced and newly unemployed guy who enrolls in college to improve his future job chances; he'd gone into the navy in his youth, instead of school. While this scenario might suggest a number of possibilities for Hanks to comment on generational angst or the economic recession of the Aughts, he pretty much focuses on Larry getting hipper and becoming attracted to his speech-class teacher, played by Julia Roberts. She's in loosey-goosey form, with a sparkling drunk scene and a few well-snapped put-downs (the latter mostly directed at her shiftless husband, Bryan Cranston). Larry has mildly happy experiences: front-lawn conversations with yard-sale neighbors Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson, budding friendship with a cute young Gen Y'er (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her boyfriend (Wilmer Valderrama), and teacher's pet status with his econ prof (George Takei). For the most part, though, Hanks makes Larry Crowne as though conducting an experiment in how few serious conflicts you can put into a movie and still have it be a movie. Unfortunately, this means the film's pleasantness feels pretty slack, and while you may get a few smiles out of the situation, you won't get too many chortles. We've seen the wild man in Hanks before, and this movie could use a little of that energy

(E/F)