2005 / 123 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Ben Heckendorn

Short review: Watch Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” instead.

Slightly longer review:

I liked “Jerry Maguire” (only watched it once though), thought “Almost Famous” was pretty good. “Vanilla Sky” was cool and weird and somehow made over $100 million despite the fact it musta confused the hell outta most audiences. So yeah then I’d have to say “Elizabethtown” is the least of the Cameron Crowe films I’ve seen.

Here’s the plot: Legolas (I mean Orlando Bloom) loses his company a billion dollars and is about to kill himself when he gets a phone call from his sister saying his dad is dead. So he goes to – get this – ELIZABETHTOWN (we have a title!) to get his body and bring it back home to Oregon.

(Note: This movie does get points for having a “young hip designer” character but NOT having them live in New York like every other film)

So of course the big thing is a romance between him and flight attendant Kirsten Dunst, star of “Spider-man” and “JUMANJI”! (Must always be written in all caps) They get to “meet cute” on the emptiest airplane I have ever seen. Let me clarify. Just a couple days ago I was on a flight from Dallas to Madison that was maybe 1/3 full and I thought “This is the emptiest airplane I have ever seen” But that record was SHATTERED by this movie as Orlando Bloom is the only person in the entire coach section. So they give him a seat in First Class, which itself maybe contains 3 people.

See, this is the kind of hokey romance bullshit I don’t like. The only way to get a flight attendant to talk to a character long enough for them to connect is to have the plane completely empty. On top of that, even though she’s not the best looking actress out there Kirsten Dunst is still leagues prettier than 95% of flight attendants I’ve ever seen. Why not just have her character be sitting next to Bloom on a normally full flight? Wait, that happened in “Jerry Maguire”, didn’t it? Sigh..

Shit, I wasted 2 paragraphs complaining about an airplane – I’d better move on. OK so Bloom goes to “Elizabethtown” and hangs out with his extended family which consists entirely of old people. Then… eh. You know, he doesn’t really LEARN anything about his father; he just broods and argues about cremation versus burial. There is really no *point* to this movie. The superior “dealing with a dead dad” movie “Big Fish” was very focused – it was simply about man learning about his dad’s life.

“Elizabethtown”, I had no clue. Is it about connecting with his family? Falling in love in the girl from “JUMANJI”? Not committing suicide when he goes back home? This lack of focus is why I consider it a mess. A lot of characters are given a lot of screen time which certainly doesn’t help. Sure life is messy but a movie is about giving purpose to what we don’t usually understand and focusing it to a central theme we can relate to. Dale liked this film a lot more than I did but mentioned it should have been edited differently, perhaps in a non-linear fashion using flashbacks. I agree, I mean, it worked for “Big Fish” Having a “present day” story gives the movie a spine to branch off from. It could have helped a lot. Oh well..

Kirsten Dunst pops in and out of this movie every couple of scenes to hang out with Bloom and make him feel better. Then she leaves for a couple scenes, wash rinse repeat. I guess she’s leading him on, teasing him, by leaving all the time, but it just seemed like pointless “extending” especially since they hit it off so well at first (during an all-night phone call, which is probably the best scene in the film) Then of course there’s the usual “end of Act 2 fight” where Bloom all of sudden gets mad at her, saying “All I want to do is go back home [and kill myself].”

This is why I rarely watch movies these days – they’re all structured the same. ESPECIALLY romantic comedies. No matter how well a couple is getting along it always happens - at the end of Act 2 (usually around the 1 hour 10 minute mark) one of them, usually the guy, has to get mad and tell his dark “secret” which either makes the woman run away or he distances himself from her. Then he realizes he’s wrong and there’s the inevitable mad dash to the airport to get her back. EVERY FUCKING TIME!

Elizabethtown doesn’t have the mad dash to the airport though. Instead they have the fight, and then Bloom goes to his father’s dedication ceremony. His mom tap-dances, his cousin’s band plays, all is well. A fire starts, no big deal. Dunst shows up of course and they smile at each other through the sprinklers. This could be the end of the movie BUT..

Bloom has to drive back home to Oregon! (No empty planes this time!) See Dunst has assembled this “Super-Map” for him which requires an entire briefcase. It also includes CD’s to listen to along the way so Cameron Crowe can fulfill his mission of actually using every song every recorded in his library of films. The map is full of hand-written notes, photos of her and magazine clippings. Upon seeing it you realize why her character always was running off – it seriously must have taken WEEKS to assemble the god damn thing.

I guess this trip through “Americana” is supposed to mean something, with Bloom visiting famous places and scattering his father’s ashes at them. But it’s just boring and tacked-on, making the movie a good 20 minutes longer than it should be in a way Spielberg would be envious of.

Ok here’s the zinger. If you think about it it’s REALLY stupid. Halfway through his journey I’m thinking “Jesus Christ he’s only in KANSAS and it’s already been 20 minutes of this crap? Is this movie gonna be another 30 minutes long??” but then I’m saved! Kirsten’s “Super-Map” - which by this point has basically become the Marlon Brando “Memory Crystals” in “Superman” – directs him to a farmer’s market in, hell, Oklahoma I guess. And it says “You can do 2 things: Keep going home using the rest of this map or look for a girl in a red hat.”

Of course he looks around and wow, Kirsten has followed him there! Happy happy smile, hug hug, blah blah, the end. Now think about this. Why did she even make the rest of the map? Considering the detail in the thing it must have been a shitload of work for nothing. So what does she think, “Well if he doesn’t meet me here he can use the map to get home anyway and I’ll be alone” How could she make the second half of the map without crying all over the thing? It doesn’t make sense to me. The whole end sequence doesn’t make sense – it’s just an excuse for a music and scenery montage. Ug.

This movie, despite being a mess, is well-intentioned with good performances so I’ll it give 2 fists for effort. I didn’t stick through the credits but I’d imagine half their length was song credits. Crowe, please make movies or music videos, not both.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2005 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Ben's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.