Movie Review: Elizabethtown
The film opens on Drew (Orlando Bloom) as he flies to the company headquarters to meet with the CEO. It seems that Drew's latest project is about to flop badly into the realm of fiasco to the tune of a billion dollars. Later that night as he contemplates suicide, he gets a call from his sister saying that his father died while vacationing in Kentucky. As the oldest male in the family, he has to fly out to Kentucky and pick up his father's remains. On the way there he meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a perky flight attendant. They have a connection which deepens over a marathon phone call later that night. In the mean time, Drew has to deal with his extended family while taking care of his father's remains.
I'm a big Cameron Crowe fan. I loved Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous. So I was excited to see Elizabethtown. But after watching it, I was struck by a sense that something was missed. It certainly wasn't extra footage as Elizabethtown just kept going. I guess what was missing was a focus. There are so many threads that are introduced but have nothing done with them. For example, Stacy Keach plays someone who swindled Drew's father out of some money. But we never get any details about what happened. Drew has this spectacular failure, but we don't know what happened. Why was his shoe such a spectacular failure? Drew runs into an extremely friendly wedding party, but other than padding the running length it doesn't accomplish anything. The salesman at the funeral home keeps ogling Claire and nothing else happens. It doesn't come up again.
Orlando Bloom is photogenic, but the character doesn't come through enough to really connect with him. And the script mashes a romantic comedy, a family drama, and a family comedy into one mishmash of a script. I had a feeling that the movie was trying to say something about the relationships between fathers and sons, about the importance of family, and about the redemptive power of love. I don't know, but it's all sort of mashed in there. In the end, the movie left me unsatisfied.
I'm a big Cameron Crowe fan. I loved Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous. So I was excited to see Elizabethtown. But after watching it, I was struck by a sense that something was missed. It certainly wasn't extra footage as Elizabethtown just kept going. I guess what was missing was a focus. There are so many threads that are introduced but have nothing done with them. For example, Stacy Keach plays someone who swindled Drew's father out of some money. But we never get any details about what happened. Drew has this spectacular failure, but we don't know what happened. Why was his shoe such a spectacular failure? Drew runs into an extremely friendly wedding party, but other than padding the running length it doesn't accomplish anything. The salesman at the funeral home keeps ogling Claire and nothing else happens. It doesn't come up again.
Orlando Bloom is photogenic, but the character doesn't come through enough to really connect with him. And the script mashes a romantic comedy, a family drama, and a family comedy into one mishmash of a script. I had a feeling that the movie was trying to say something about the relationships between fathers and sons, about the importance of family, and about the redemptive power of love. I don't know, but it's all sort of mashed in there. In the end, the movie left me unsatisfied.
posted by mypetrock at 9:35 AM
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