Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005) [3]
A major disappointment doesn’t come anywhere close describing how I feel about this film. I absolutely loved Almost Famous and this, Crowe’s follow-up, takes all the goodwill that picture built up in me and throws into a big stinking pile of rotten cheese. Crowe’s films have always existed somewhere between solid emotional relevance and total cheesiness, but this film is 100% limburger. Man, I was grinding my teeth anytime that Orlando Bloom opened his mouth. His character is a vapid, self-satisfied do-gooder that just pops his way in and out of scenes with nothing redeeming about him. And don’t get me started on the Kirsten Dunst character, another one of these peppy, living-life-to-the-fullest androids that teaches the dour male character that there is something in life worth living for. Give me break, please. The only time the film catches is when the Bloom characters shuts up and lets his family take over. Too much time is spent on having these two talk on cell phones, as if the cell phone has brought enlightenment to society, now that we can talk for ever and ever and ever… (A film should NEVER feature a fifteen minute sequence with characters talking on phones. End of discussion). Crowe is usually a master of handling a soundtrack but it really lands on target only a small number of times throughout the film, and he relies way too much on it at the end to give it its emotion. That’s what the images should be doing, but that was abandoned a long time before. From the way I’ve been writing it sounds like I absolutely hated this film, but I really don’t. I just expected a lot better.