Elizabethtown (2005)

Rated PG-13 for language and some sexual references.
123 Minutes

Written and Directed By: Cameron Crowe
Staring: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Jessica Biel, Bruce McGill, Judy Greer, Paul Schneider, and Tim Devitt

I’m impossible to forget, but I’m hard to remember. -Claire

Synopsis

During an outrageous memorial for a Southern patriarch, an unexpected romance blooms between a young woman and man

Review

So today I hit the chick flicks.  One, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, and the other staring John Cusack.  There was hope on the horizon.  Elizabethtown, the film created by Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, Say Anything, and Jerry Maguire), one of my favorite writer/directors, also stared Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst.  The previews gave the false ideal this was a typical love story romance, with obvious formula most “chick flicks” have.  Staring Orlando Bloom and KirstenDunst helped sell that ideal, and somehow I forgot all about Elizabethtown.  Had I known it was a Cameron Crowe engine I would have been more interested, and rightly so.

The most interesting thing about Crowes movies is that they are so incredibly diverse from each other, though common threads of his genius seem to linger in each of them.  He usually stars his films with fantastically creative characters that are compelling, mysterious, and most with an overwhelming amount of faults. Elizabethtown’s main source of interest, played by Bloom, begins the film by suffering one of the most colossal professional errors in the history of business.  In the midst of his failure he meets a flight attendant on the way to his father’s funeral.  She is socially awkward, needy, but a real person.  In this moment of chance they connect in the way real people might.

Crowe also has a unique insight into romance.  The way his character’s fall in love is never simple, but not a forced kind of complex either.  His romances usually avoid the typical Hollywood, will they or won’t they’s, the misunderstandings, and then finally having a trite epiphany that they are meant for each other and though have been thwarted in the past meet together, kiss, and then the romantic music and credits.  Elizabethtown does have some of those elements, and some did leave me a little confused, but in general how the romance developed, and the honesty of both character’s was believable instead of sensationalized.

What was largely missing from this film was Crowe’s quiet sense of comedy.  He can generally tap into real human awkwardness and emote it in a way that becomes tangible rather than exploiting it.  There were only brief moments of that balanced genius.  Susan Sarandon’s big finale felt like it was trying to go there, but was more or less anti-climatic and uncomfortable.  It just never came together.

Each time Orlando Bloom was onscreen, I felt relieved.  His character seemed to ground the strange story, and balance the failure of his own personal life, the outrageous relatives, the flighty Claire (Dunst), and then finally when he comes to terms with the grief of losing his father, it is a truly genuine feeling.  The best part of the entire movie, is him alone in his car, driving.  It’s a real people moment.

The last twenty minutes are the payoff you get for conquering this romantic comedy.  Cameron Crowe can write complex, unique women with an unforgettable charm like few other writers in the world.  His dialogue sucks you in, and his character’s appeal to both men and women.  Elizabethtown had moments of this greatness, but those moments came in between scenes that did not live up to Crowe’s potential genius.  They came at inadvertent moments, and occasionally convinced me it was a better movie than it actually was.  It rose above the typical romantic comedy, but still left me feeling a bit “irked” at times.  The Verdict?  It was worth sitting through some of the annoying moments to enjoy the great ones.