OF writer/director Cameron Crowe, we may say without rancour or insult that it’s okay to be idiosyncratic. And eccentric. So long as people buy a ticket to his movie, who cares?

With those effervescent qualities in its lineage, “Aloha” is kinda fun. Former US Air Force hotshot Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper), a major contributor to the space defence program, now a civilian contractor, arrives in Hawaii to oversee the construction of a new gate between the base and the mountain enclave where a small community of purebred Hawaiians live as a sovereign state led by Dennis Kanahele playing himself.

If that’s not idiosyncratic or eccentric enough for you, check out the Air Force captain assigned to be his local minder, Allison Ng (Emma Stone), very blonde, very pretty, a hotshot aviator, of very mixed race – 50 per cent Swedish, 25 per cent Hawaiian, 25 per cent not specified. On the tarmac, Tracy (Rachel McAdams) greets Gilcrest as if, before he left Hawaii 13 years earlier, they’d been best buddies. Tracy’s husband (John Krasinski) doesn’t say much whenever he gets home from flying.

Squillionaire Welch (Bill Murray) has funded a space research craft about to launch, a technical marvel delivering a performance as good as any in the film. General Dixon (Alec Baldwin) arrives to deliver platitudes at the launch.

So who’s the bad guy among this lot? And how’s Gilcrest going to deal with two delectable women who wish to loom large in his life? For answers to those important questions, spend 105 minutes escaping from reality while gazing at a simplistic plot and having a few laughs. And deciding, for the boys, which of Stone and McAdams is the more delectable and, for the girls, whether Krasinski or Cooper offers the best package.

At all cinemas