Elizabethtown

Reviewed by Aricson Tarasova
February 16, 2006

Director/Writer: Cameron Crowe Studio: Paramount MPAA: PG-13 for language and some sexual references Website: www.elizabethtown.com Review Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Orlando Bloom stars as Drew, a young shoe designer who, just before killing himself over a monumental career failure, receives a call from his sister informing him that their father has died during a visit to his hometown of Elizabethtown, Kentucky . Drew is commanded by his sister to fly from Portland , Oregon to Elizabethtown as a representative of the family to pay his respects to his father's hometown relations and collect his father's remains. On the flight to Kentucky , a flight attendant named Claire, played by Kristen Dunst, brings it upon herself to cheer up the suicidal Drew. Claire continues to bring him back to life even after their flight has landed, and they soon form a relationship. Meanwhile, Drew is introduced to his father's relations and ultimately comes to terms with his losses.

Orlando Bloom and Kristen Dunst trying to get closer in Elizabethtown.

THE GOOD:
What is wonderful about Elizabethtown is the romance between Drew and Claire. Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst have a fun chemistry that makes you root for these two to throw down their emotional obstacles, get together and give each other a heartwarming kiss at the end of the movie. Kristen Dunst shines as Claire, a girl with an optimistic heart, but who is unable to commit herself to Drew because she is supported by a sugar daddy. The dialog between Drew and Claire during their budding romance is rich and genuinely believable; plus, they make a downright cute couple. Elizabethtown works when these two are interacting – sharing life philosophies, having fun together, challenging each other, communicating on the phone, or even when they are just thinking about each other, but when they are not together or under each other's influence…

THE BAD:
.... the movie is an embarrassment to watch. The members of Drew's Southern family are two-dimensional caricatures that pollute the romance of the film with a forced comedy. The worst and most incomprehensible creative embarrassment is when Drew's mother, played by Susan Sarandon, does a tap and comic routine at her late husband's memorial in front of a group of people that she has alienated for thirty years. It's hackneyed scenes like this that left me scratching my head and wondering who Cameron Crowe thinks he is by playing such grotesque sentimentality for the lowest of comic effects? It's as if he believes his work is above the most basic rules of dramatic narrative – and all for the sake of blaring the film's theme of risk. Crowe violently beats the audience over the head with what he feels is important in the story, leaving no room for personal interpretation or even the most basic of thoughts.

Even Alec Baldwin's talent is horribly misused in a fake and over-the-top portrayal of Drew's boss who blames him solely for losing the company nearly one billion dollars on a poorly designed shoe. I want to know how a company could loose nearly one billion dollars on a shoe? The movie never explains how or why the shoe was so seriously flawed as to necessitate a massive product recall, or even how such a cataclysmic flaw was not detected before production. Even the plot points in Elizabethtown are played to comic book proportions.

Another problem occurs when Orlando Bloom performs his voice-overs. Now, I'm not a big fan of screenwriters using voice-overs to inform the audience of what is going on emotionally with a character, but Orlando had particular trouble mastering his fake American accent and expressing the emotion that should had been playing naturally in his voice. The result is a dull and overworked performance that, at times, made me cringe. Perhaps Claire should have done all the voice-overs. After all, Kristen Dunst's Southern accent was a pleasure to listen to, and most importantly – authentic and believable.

The Ugly:
The DVD features of Elizabethtown are an absolute joke. There is nothing that attempts to make any illumination on the making of the film – no featurettes, no commentary, no deleted scenes or interviews. There are only crudely edited montages reminiscent of someone's boring home movies that seem to “artistically” mock standard DVD features. When it comes to DVD features, I want some history on the film's inception and its production, not the filmmaker's egocentric statement on the concept of DVD features or some artistic embellishment of the movie itself. Elizabethtown 's DVD features are cheaply made filler for the purpose of advertising something on the back of the DVD package.

I'm giving Elizabethtown a Low/Medium Evolution Rating because, let me indulge and repeat myself here – this movie had the potential to be absolutely brilliant. I mean, this movie's a true joy to watch when Orlando Bloom and Kristen Dunst are interacting, but when they are not, this movie completely fails. I've never seen a movie that is so polarized as to have scenes imbued with fresh, authentic and fun execution followed by scenes guilty of the worst crimes of Hollywood hack and befouled by the cheapest, commercially-packaged sentimentality. One day I will want to see Elizabethtown again, but not without my finger on the chapter skip button of my DVD remote.