Elizabethtown Review
by Ryan Ellis (flickershows AT hotmail DOT com)January 30th, 2006
Elizabethtown (2005)
reviewed by Ryan Ellis
January 20, 2006
It's hard to believe that a dose of wretched rom-comitis could ever infect a picture written & directed by Cameron Crowe, but the cloying TV ads made it seem very possible. An unfinished print screened for audiences at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival wasn't received well either. However, 'Elizabethtown' is not an awful pile of bile. It's just awfully mediocre.
Crowe took it on the chin when he released the enigmatic 'Vanilla Sky' a few years ago. It was a good movie (with one of Tom Cruise's best performances), but it wasn't what fans of 'Say Anything', 'Jerry Maguire', and 'Almost Famous' wanted. So perhaps the Drew Baylor character (played by Orlando Bloom) in 'Elizabethtown' is somewhat autobiographical. Drew is a hotshot running shoe designer for a Nike-like shoe company. He thought he had created something fantastic, but it's an utter bomb. The boss says it will cost the company 3/4s of a billion dollars. Curiously, no one in the fictional-but-we-all-know-it's-supposed-to-be-Nike company piped up and tried to fix the problem before it got to this stage. Isn't that what bosses are for? Anyway, Drew alone takes the blame for how much money the company stands to lose.
Crowe must not have been able to use his clout to get Phil Knight to just play himself, so Alec Baldwin does it for him. And he does a fine job. Baldwin (who was so terrific in a similar role in 'The Cooler' a few years ago) has settled into a nice solo routine of playing both good cop AND bad cop in recent supporting parts. He's become the character actor he always should have been when studios were spending years sticking him into handsome leading man parts like 'The Marrying Man'. He was out of his element in that type of role. Nearly 50 now, he has enough experience and gravitas to play an intimidating boss with the good humour to fire somebody affectionately.
So Drew is stricken. Everything he's ever wanted seems to be going up in a stylish cloud of smoke. He throws most of his belongings out onto the street and concocts an unnecessarily elaborate suicide device out of a stationary bike and some sharp knives. Right before grisly inevitability---and in another of Crowe's close-to-home touches---Drew's sister, Heather (Judy Greer), calls to say that dad is dead. Their father, Mitch, was visiting his family home in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, when he suddenly died. Drew will have to go there to claim the body. He puts his suicide on pause and does what movie directors love for their characters to do---he goes on a road trip to learn about What's Really Important In Life.
Enter Kirsten Dunst as Claire Colburn, a flight attendant Drew meets on his red-eye flight to Kentucky. He's just trying to do some silent grieving and she won't shut the hell up. Drew finally shakes free of the flighty flight attendant, only to find one of those huge extended families waiting for him in Elizabethtown. You know the type. Most of them are photogenic or at worst "movie ugly", they all have quirks, and they make the star seem normal by comparison. Drew spends a few days with them and learns a thing or two about dear departed Mitch, but he can't shake Claire from his mind. In one of the better scenes, a phone conversation becomes an all-night gab session. At this point, we know what they will know by movie's end...they're in love.
Nuts to that. I would have preferred to see them learn their lessons and then go their separate ways. Even though Dunst gets to play some of those distinct Crowe scenes (such as a charming, yet overused, touch of pantomiming snapping a photo of Drew as he walks away), there's just something not right about her performance. It doesn't help that her accent comes & goes like AM radio at night. She's also stretching herself thin in a part better suited for someone with more edge and more range. However, she's cuter than ever with those gorgeous dimples and she's likable in a bizarro sort of way. The usually punch-deserving Orlando Bloom was actually tolerable this time, although his performance is still fairly dull.
It's strange that a writer who types up such kick-ass roles for women always struggles to find the right woman for the job. Crowe let Penelope Cruz butcher his words in 'Vanilla Sky' and now he has Dunst pulling a sweetie-pie act throughout 'Elizabethtown'. During some of the late-night scenes, I was surprised that she didn't call Mommy & Daddy to ask permission if she could stay out past 11. Sadly, Dunst is still too girlie to pull off the part of a worldly wisecracker. The movie lives & dies on whatever chemistry the 2 leads have. And they are cute together. Prom cute, though, not grown-up cute. She does look fabulous in that dress she's wearing on the poster.
Susan Sarandon is mildly annoying in early scenes as Drew's mom, Hollie, then she settles in at the end of the film to lend some humanity and a sense of humour. During Mitch's memorial, she steals her only big scene (from herself, I guess) while battling a tough room. See, Mitch's family members don't like Hollie very much because they think she's responsible for moving her husband and the kids to the West Coast. Some jokes, some tears, and some dancing wins them over, though, and that's when the movie should have ended. An extended coda where Drew takes pop's remains on one last tour of America wasn't tacky, but it WAS tacked on.
And that makes this the first time that Crowe doesn't find a graceful way to wrap up one of his movies. He's always been great at leaving you wanting more, yet feeling satisfied with what you got. In 'Elizabethtown', things were essentially resolved during the memorial and to keep going dampened what would have been a satisfying climax (complete with a flaming paper bird and a cover band rocking out like madmen). And if you thought there's a chance the movie would end with Drew returning home to his suicidal exercise machine, you're even more cynical than I am.
The movie as a whole is just plain flat. When Crowe's pictures resemble those of his idol Billy Wilder, it's because his dialogue and characters crackle. These characters aren't original or particularly interesting. Crowe has never been worse, actually, even if this is a watchable and occasionally entertaining film. I guess I hold the guy fairly high up on a pedastal because he made terrific movies like 'Jerry Maguire' and 'Almost Famous'. But here's some good news---your ears are sure to have a good time during 'Elizabethtown'. As usual, Nancy Wilson (the director's wife) churns out a pretty good guitar-driven music score to accompany the Crowe-standard assortment of pop tunes.
However, your heart probably won't agree with your ears about this one. 'Elizabethtown' is certainly designed for lovebirds, not cynical singles. You might like it more than I did if you see it on Date Night with a DVD and some cuddling on the couch. I write this review after the movie has long since bombed its way out of theatres nationwide, so studio execs better HOPE it finds a DVD audience. The bottom line is, Cameron Crowe is capable of so much better. And if this is his response to people who trashed 'Vanilla Sky', somebody keep all exercise bikes and knives away from the guy.
To pop my balloon, write to [email protected] or [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
