Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown showed a lot of promise but ultimately choked on unnecessarily long and sometimes pointless scenes, as well as lengthy stretches of time when the story came to a dead stop. It wasn’t necessarily a bad movie per se, but I wouldn’t spend $10 to see it in theaters. Ok, well obviously I would because I had to review it, but that doesn’t mean that you should be so unfortunate as well.

Poor Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) has just been fired from his job at a major shoe corporation for creating the worst shoe design ever. Somehow the blame for the shoe fiasco, which will cost the company roughly $1 billion, falls squarely on Drew’s shoulders—because apparently engineers get to make all the billion-dollar decisions at this shoe corporation. Suddenly feeling extremely depressed that he is stuck in this movie, Orlando Bloom decides to commit suicide with a bizarre exercise bike/knife contraption. He answers a phone call from his sister (Judy Greer) at the last second, and she tearfully informs him that their father died while visiting his family in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. As his sister must stay behind to deal with a psychotic Susan Sarandon, Drew puts his suicidal plans on hold in order to travel to Kentucky and retrieve his father’s body for cremation. Claire (Kirsten Dunst) is the lone stewardess on a severely undersold flight to Kentucky, and she miraculously knows all the right things to say to a morose Drew. Several hours later, Drew calls her when he feels lonely and depressed in his hotel room, and they have an all-night conversation about anything and everything. From there they proceed to tediously dance around their mutual attraction while Claire solves all of Drew’s problems with her perky spirit and various theories on life.

In addition to the plodding romance, we must also lumber around with the funeral drama surrounding Drew’s father. There were actually some fairly entertaining moments between Drew and his Kentucky relatives, as well as an especially funny rendition of Lynard Skynard’s “Free Bird” by one of Drew’s cousins; however, these flashes of entertainment were constantly undercut by extremely boring or ridiculous counterparts. The “Free Bird” performance is dampened somewhat by Drew’s mother (Susan Sarandon), who gives a disturbing eulogy that morphs into a self-serving attempt at stand-up comedy. I knew I was supposed to find it all quite amusing, but it fell extremely flat.

It was as though Crowe had a sweet and at times entertaining story to tell the audience, but he was simply too long-winded in his delivery. I generally enjoyed the romance between Drew and Claire, even if it was a tad unrealistic, and had Crowe sliced about half an hour’s worth of film then I think Elizabethtown could have prevailed as a solid romantic comedy.

The best word to describe this movie would probably be mediocre. I wouldn’t run screaming in terror when it comes out on DVD, but it might not be a bad idea to do so while it’s still in theaters. If you have a high tolerance for circuitous storytelling then Elizabethtown won’t be so bad, but otherwise I would steer clear.