Click Here For Our Interview with Orlando Bloom

Click Here For Our Interview with Kirsten Dunst

Elizabethtown

I recently visited my hometown, where I spent the first twenty-two years of my life. For me home was Medway, Massachusetts. A small town not far from Boston, that has definitely grown, but the people and the places haven't seemed to change so much. The town itself, despite its growth, seems so much smaller then it ever did before. I'm sure it's because I have traveled around the world and am now living in New York City. I still thought though that maybe I could learn something more about myself returning to this place, but it just made me realize I had gotten all I could from where I began. The new film, Elizabethtown is about returning home, growing up and living in the moment.

Elizabethtown is written and directed by Cameron Crowe and stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. It follows the journey of Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) who has found great career success in his twenties, but when a shoe he designs turns into a billion dollar fiasco, he loses his job. He also loses his girlfriend (Jessica Biel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and his reason to live along with her. His life is prolonged one day further then he thought when his sister (Judy Greer, 13 Going on 30) calls to inform him that their father has died. His mother (Susan Sarandon) then tells him that he must go back to Elizabethtown and deal with the other side of the family, seeing as how the two sides of the family have never integrated well, she stays behind.

On his way to bury his father, he meets an airplane flight attendant named Claire Coburn (Kirsten Dunst). She has a cheery optimism and a genuine desire to get to know Drew. They connect on this flight and their connection is what gets Drew through the next week of learning about himself and his father, whom he never really connected with when he was alive.

Cameron Crowe has directed some of the very best movies of the last twenty years including Say Anthing…, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous. He is known for being able to write with his heart on his sleeve and reveal the small truths in life that make living such a joy and a challenge. He is known for integrating music and film seamlessly and making it feel organic, and not like an extended music video. So, it is with great disappointment that I declare Elizabethtown a fiasco, a disappointment, a film with so little to love.

The film has so many broadly written and one dimensional characters beginning with the two leads. Orlando Bloom in his first contemporary role, struggles with the comedy and with showing the heat ache that occurs with failure and the uncertainty

of knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. Kirsten Dunst, in a role that could be called a pale imitation of the one Kate Hudson played to perfection in Almost Famous, is a grating caricature of a real person. These two are cute opposite each other, but are not a couple you can really root for. They both never feel integrated or involved in this story. There is never a believable moment, just a series of movie moments. This continues throughout the entire film, right down to the last fifteen minutes that does play like an extended music video on VH1.

Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Judy Greer, and Jessica Biel all exist in this disappointment, if only briefly. Each of their roles do nothing more but to remind you of a past Crowe film and the characters that they were obviously inspired by. It seems to me Cameron Crowe has run out of original ideas and now with the release of this film, is recycling old material with stale dialogue. I do believe that he is obviously talented enough to bounce back, but maybe he should take his own road trip before he writes again.

Despite my disappointment, the soundtrack is worth buying. It suggests everything the movie wanted to say, but couldn't. And I thank Cameron Crowe for introducing me to such tracks as "My Father's Gun" by Elton John and "It'll All Work Out" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Movie Grade: D

Synopsis:

After causing the Oregon shoe company he works for to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, Drew Baylor (Bloom) is fired for his mistake, and promptly also dumped by his girlfriend, Ellen (Biel). On the verge of suicide, Drew is oddly given a new purpose in life when he is brought back to his family’s small Kentucky hometown of Elizabethtown following the death of his father, Mitch, as it falls to him to make sure that his dying wishes are fulfilled. On the way home, Drew meets a flight attendant, Claire Colburn (Dunst), with whom he falls in love, in a romance that helps his life get back on track.