Ahead of Aloha’s release, Sony faced criticism from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans​ for not featuring islanders or Asian Americans in speaking roles, despite Hawaii being only 30 percent white. There’s some truth to the group’s complaint that the film uses Hawaii as an “exotic backdrop,” and the entire main cast is indeed white (Alec Baldwin, Bill Murray, and Danny McBride also make appearances). But MANAA neglected to mention that the film features Bumpy Kanahele, a highly respected, indigenous Hawaiian nationalist leader who plays himself. Kanahele speaks on his own turf and in his own words with Gilchrist and Ng about the problems and concerns of native Hawaiians, before inviting them to eat and drink with the rest of the community. It’s a touching, if short-lived, vignette that indisputably stems from genuine reverence and compassion for the people of Hawaii. Besides, when was the last time a major motion picture even glanced at the lives of America’s indigenous people with something other than mockery?

The film, for all its frustrating narrative flaws, gets other little things right, too: showing the islanders taking off their shoes before entering the house and highlighting the fraught relationship between Hawaiians and the U.S. military. (Aloha goes so far as to use the incredibly loaded term “occupation,” giving voice to a controversial, but forcefully held local viewpoint.) It also casts actual Hawaiians to play Native Hawaiian characters, unlike 50 First Dates, which had the noted character actor Rob Schneider play a shirtless, marijuana-loving Hawaiian caricature named Ula.

But it’s true that most of these characters don’t have any lines, which may give the unfortunate impression that Kanahele’s just a local mouthpiece—or a symbol—shoehorned into the storyline. This is a point that will undoubtedly come off to many as an unnecessarily critical to many viewers. But to understand MANAA’s frustration, it’s important to remember that many Americans see Hawaii less as a real place than as a promise on a postcard, already reduced to an abstraction, and its native inhabitants even more so.

It’s hard, too, to defend Aloha against claims that it overly romanticizes Hawaii. The opening credits run over old-timey footage set to ukelele music—a kind of mood-collage approach that bogs down the rest of the film. (In place of realistic interactions, Aloha often uses swelling music to signal that an emotional connection has taken place.) Many of the characters talk, for no discernible reason, about Hawaiian mythology—the gods Lono and Pele; the menehune, or little people who live in the forests; the huaka'i pō, or warrior ghosts. Ng, Stone’s character, frequently comments on the mana (power or spiritual energy) of a particular area, as if noting the feng shui of a room. It’s within this vaguely magical, supposedly authentic context that Cooper’s character manages to finally open up to others, make amends for his past mistakes, and, of course, get the girl.