Elizabethtown has all of the elements of a great Cameron Crowe movie, but none of the Cameron Crowe vision that made Almost Famous work. It's mostly a series of sweet moments, each capped with the right song at the right time; in fact, the soundtrack is the real star of the movie, and the right song is all there is to piece together a film that is much less than the sum of its parts.
From the start of Elizabethtown, big contrasts are evoked: death and life, success and failure are side by side, so we're told. When the movie starts, Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is experiencing failure and death in spades: the shoe he spent eight years designing for Mercury (a thinly-veiled copy of Nike) has been recalled, costing his company $972 million dollars. On the verge of a suicide attempt, he learns his father has died, and Drew flies to Kentucky to retrieve the body to Oregon for cremation. On the red-eye to Louisville he meets Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst), a perky flight att'ndant with a charming flair for cute lines ("I'm impossible to forget, but I’m hard to remember," she chirps). Once in Elizabethtown, Drew tries to plan a memorial while dealing with relatives who have their own agenda in addition to his manic family back in Oregon, all while facing the reality that in a few days he'll be known nationally as one of his industry's most legendary failures. Yet still he manages to connect with Claire on an all-night cell phone conversation--complete with the requisite watching of the sunrise--and to strike up a furtive romance.
So we now have death and life side by side. But despite these dramatic shifts, what sets up to be a roller coaster ride of a film flattens out to a milquetoast middle ground with no real life of its own. Drew Baylor has suffered two tragic personal losses in the course of one day, but you wouldn't know it from Bloom's lethargic performance. There's not much to Claire either. Her whole character is made up mostly of cutesy quotable lines and mysterious little smirks. In the end, Elizabethtown is a film that doesn't know what it wants to be, and unfortunately there's no payoff, other than a few memorable lines and a great soundtrack. --Dan Vancini
(24 votes)
2.
Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom), once a rising star at a leading athletic shoe company, has just been fired due to the overwhelming failure of his design for a sneaker and the $972 million loss his company suffered because of the fiasco. As if that wasn't bad enough, things get even worse: Drew receives a phone call informing him that his father has passed away, and now, he must get on a phone for Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to retrieve his father's remains.
On the plane ride, Drew meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a flight attendant and unstoppable positive woman who changes the course of his life. It is in Kentucky that Drew comes to learn the breadth of his father's life and his own family roots. Drew, with the help of Claire, submits to discovering the possibilities for his own destiny. A love letter to the resilience of the life force.
(22 votes)
3.
IN THEATERS OCTOBER 14, 2005
Though it revolves around death, Cameron Crowe’s hotly anticipated follow-up to VANILLA SKY is optimistic overall, beaming with the same life-affirming mood as the crowd-pleasers JERRY MAGUIRE and ALMOST FAMOUS. Promising young shoe-designer Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) quickly learns how failure feels when his innovative but foolish design for a winged sneaker becomes the humiliation of the footwear industry. Informed of the magnitude of his mistake, Drew applies his design skills to the task of suicide by duct-taping a knife to an exercise machine. This melodramatic act is interrupted, however, when Drew receives a call from his sister, informing him that his father has died while on a trip to his home town of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Drew’s mother, Hollie (Susan Sarandon), elects him to go deal with the arrangements because he is the "responsible" and "successful" one. The only passenger on his flight, Drew meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a perky stewardess, who takes the opportunity to talk his ear off despite his apparent desire for some personal space. Supplying Drew with detailed hand-drawn maps, instructions for how not to get lost, and three phone numbers where she can be reached, Claire tenderly sends him off to confront a town full of relatives he has never met. Once in Elizabethtown, Drew is subjected to relentless family wackiness from people who seem to have known his father better than he did. Meanwhile, he stumbles into a hesitant romance with neurotic but charming Claire, whose anal-retentive wisdom, lust for life, and good taste in music may help Drew come to terms with his newly diminished place in the world--and to see it as possibly a better one. A love story, family drama, and road trip in one, ELIZABETHTOWN boasts another of Crowe’s excellent soundtracks, with artists like Tom Petty and Elton John giving the film much of its emotional drive.
(20 votes)
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