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Film review

Cameron Crowe, recycled

Elizabethtown delivers all the director's staples, except the moment that makes a memorable Cameron Crowe movie.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published October 13, 2005

Everything that makes a Cameron Crowe movie worth anticipating is overdone in Elizabethtown. The wall-to-wall pop music is too meaningful, the screwball comedy too screwy, and there's so much straining for whimsy that the screen seems to bend into a forced smile.

There is evidence of what Elizabethtown could have been in its final minutes when an affecting road trip story emerges. That's when Crowe's preoccupation with romanticism, rock 'n' roll and Americana - at his best they're one and the same - finally finds meaning. Until then, the movie is a jumble of cute flirting, cockeyed pessimism and song lyrics substituted for screenwriting. Elizabethtown feels lazier than any Crowe film ever.

Consider how he recycles and coasts: The hero, Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is having a career crisis like Jerry Maguire, only with shoes instead of jocks. Drew's extended, eccentric family could be found anywhere in movies. A carefree flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) is named Claire Colburn but might as well be Penny Lane, the groupie optimist from Almost Famous. When it ends, Elizabethtown leaves us as perplexed as Vanilla Sky although that's not intentional this time.

One problem is that Drew isn't someone to whom viewers easily relate. Maybe it's because designing athletic shoes isn't something we understand like pro sports and rock 'n' roll bands. I don't really care that Drew designed a flop that will lose his company nearly $1-billion, except that Alec Baldwin is fun making him feel lousy about it.

During an awkward suicide attempt, Drew learns his father (Billy Green Bush, in repose) has died while visiting Elizabethtown, his old Kentucky home. Drew never knew the place; Mitch Baylor was pulled away to the West Coast 28 years ago by his bride (Susan Sarandon) and the town hasn't forgiven her. But they welcome Mitch's son, whoever he is. Drew is supposed to deliver a blue suit for his father's cremation. Nobody else likes the funeral plan.

Enter Drew's personality muse, Claire, whose cheery in-flight demeanor gradually becomes more personal. Dunst shows easy charisma, but the role is emotionally inscrutable. Is Claire as happy as she seems? Is this really love or one of those buddy things? Crowe wants her mysterious, and that's fine if he'll reveal something later. But Claire is an underwritten role for an actor who can do more, unlike handsomely bland Bloom, whose role has the goods but he can't deliver them.

Elizabethtown feels a flow chart branching into ideas that maybe we'll get back to later. Drew's mother, Hollie (Susan Sarandon), and sister, Heather (Judy Greer), in Oregon are obviously high-strung, but we don't know why or what Mitch thought about that. They get so little script attention that when Hollie commandeers Mitch's memorial service with comedy and tap dancing, she's intruding more upon us than upon the folks in Elizabethtown. The movie jumps track, and not even a decent cover of Free Bird can inspire Crowe to a graceful recovery.

So, he simply heads in a different direction that should have been taken from the start. Claire sends Drew on a soul-cleansing road trip complete with personalized maps and CDs. Finally, Crowe's reaching for musical narration of his characters' feelings pays off. As respectfully as Crowe portrays Elizabethtown, his movie succeeds only when it's somewhere else.

Above all, Crowe seems to have misplaced his knack for the small gesture that becomes memorable, the song choice that says something but not everything. He never finds their intersection here, like Lloyd Dobler's boom box in Say Anything and the Tiny Dancer sing-along in Almost Famous. Nothing in Elizabethtown feels like a signature moment or even faddish like "Show me the money!" The closest to a mantra is Mitch's line when things go badly: "If it wasn't this, it'd be something else." Those are words for making amends, not movies.

Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com His blog is at www.sptimes.com/blogs/film

Grade: C

Director: Cameron Crowe

Cast: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer, Bruce McGill, Alec Baldwin, Jessica Biel, Gailard Sartain, Paul Schneider

Screenplay: Cameron Crowe

Rating: PG-13; profanity, brief sexual content

Running time: 123 min.

[Last modified October 12, 2005, 10:18:06]