Elizabethtown
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Written by Cameron Crowe
Rated PG-13: for language and some sexual references
By Erik McClanahan
“Elizabethtown” is a movie that demands quirky, original performances from its leads, but alas Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst were not up to the challenge.
With a scattered storyline and an overabundance of cheese-filled sentiment, writer/director Cameron Crowe (“Jerry Maguire” and “Almost Famous”) makes a mess out of what basically adds up to a misguided “Garden State” rip-off.
The film opens with Drew Baylor (Bloom), an up-and-coming shoe designer who works for a powerful shoe corporation, as he comes to work on the worst day of his life: what Drew calls “his fiasco.”
Drew’s idea for a new tennis shoe costs his business $972 million when it fails miserably (his boss, played by Alec Baldwin, reads him an awful review of the shoe that proclaims “the shoe is the best reason to walk in your bare feet”) and he begins to feel suicidal.
As Drew is about to kill himself he receives a phone call. His father has suddenly died while visiting his home town (can you guess the name of the Kentucky town?), and his mother and sister want him to get his father so he can be cremated.
Right from the beginning of the film, I disliked Bloom’s performance. He doesn’t seem to have much of a personality throughout the entire film, and the narration he provides throughout the story is tedious and boring.
I am not an Orlando Bloom hater, though. He of course played the coolest elf in film history as Legolas in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, but that role didn’t require him to say many lines.
On his trip to Kentucky, Drew meets Claire (Dunst, in one of her many annoying performances), a flight attendant who is immediately drawn to him and talks to him the entire flight.
Claire persistently gives Drew directions on how to get to Elizabethtown and includes her phone number with the detailed map. Drew eventually calls her and they talk all night, concluding the conversation as they drive halfway to meet each other for the sunrise.
The two become romantically involved, and the story begins to derail. Is this supposed to be a movie about dealing with family deaths (a subject that Crowe treats rather ridiculously here), or is it a romance about two people who compliment each other in the right way?
By then end of the film, “Elizabethtown” becomes a road trip film with a great soundtrack (Crowe certainly has a keen ear for great music).
I’ve lost interest with Crowe’s filmmaking style after “Almost Famous,” his masterpiece about rock music and rock journalism in the 70s. In that film, the brilliant soundtrack was filled with terrific classic rock tunes that were appropriate to the story, and while “Elizabethtown” also has great music (Ryan Adams’s “Come Pick Me Up” stood out), the songs only show the failures in the script and acting.
The script is all over the place, and it is the film’s biggest flaw. Cameron Crowe, so talented at writing unforgettable lines (Does “you complete me” ring any bells?) and creating classic scenes (the “tiny dancer” scene from “Almost Famous” is one of my favorite movie scenes in recent memory) instead bogs the story down with rambling speech about life, death and people.
“Elizabethtown” is a mess of a movie. It strives to be a movie about self-discovery, but fails on many levels. Hopefully on his next film Cameron Crowe can put an interesting story and characters to go with that great music.
HDFEST grading scale
-Elizabethtown-
Story C
Acting C
Visuals B
Originality C
Enjoyability D+
Overall Grade C
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