Ever had a day as bad as the one shoe designer Drew Baylor is having as this story begins?
After causing the Nike-like company he works for to lose roughly about a billion dollars, Drew (Orlando Bloom) is promptly fired for his mistake and dumped by his
girlfriend.
Wham. Bam.
On the verge of suicide, Drew gets a phonecall from his sister - his dad has just died (Kablam! Bad things always happen in threes).
Heading back to his family's small Kentucky home-town of Elizabethtown, Drew meets a quick-witted flight attendant, Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst) - and it is at that point that our tale of death and love really begins.
Elizabethtown is as melancholy as it is romantic, however, it is also a fatally family-friendly tale of failure and redemption. Compare it to Garden State (big-city fella Zach Braff goes to small home-town for funeral of parent and meets girl of his dreams Natalie Portman), which was released earlier this year.
Garden State was a homecoming story that was particularly applicable to all the jaded, numb Generation X-ers out there. Lots of drugs (prescription and non-prescription), casual sex and bad behaviour.
In short, how it is for young folk these days.
This is no Gen-X story.
In fact, it may be set in the 2000s, but it feels (and sounds - check out the admittedly great soundtrack) like the 1970s.
A safer, more simplistic era.
And how quaint, friendly and ever so slightly quirky are the good citizens of Elizabethtown.
Almost irritatingly so.
It's high time for another David Lynch picture to counteract this one.
Something to tear the scab off middle America and prod a stick at the festering, nasty mess underneath.
Something akin to Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks would do nicely at this point. As that other biographer of the US psyche David Byrne of Talking Heads sang on The Big Country, "I wouldn't live there if you paid me."
And while we are spitting bile, let's cut straight to the marrow, if you don't mind a malicious mixing of metaphors.
Why, in the first place, do we have romantic boy-meets-girl films like these?
Because they make money.
Be they besotted or bereft, every loveless or in-love sap out there goes for these films like moths to a flame.
A more realistic movie on a much more common theme would be to detail the other end of relationships. All angst and bitter recriminations.
Of course, only the most dedicated of masochists would watch it, but it would probably be a welcome break from those Olsen twin films.
Back to the positive.
Orlando Bloom is supercool and Dunst is adorable. Crowe tells a great yarn and the movie looks and sounds (especially sounds) great.
It's a tale of self-discovery, which the director excels at. Remember his masterpiece Almost Famous?
Or the not-quite-so-masterful Jerry Maguire?
It doesn't matter if you don't. Elizabethtown is so smooth, sweet and palatable that it leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste.
But if you are having a bad day and need a meaningless bit of romance to pick you up, then a town like Elizabethtown is a pretty good place to start.
Elizabethtown
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Starring Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon
Rating: M
Screening at Reading Cinemas Rotorua
***1/2
Reviewed by Mike Mather
Ever had a day as bad as the one shoe designer Drew Baylor is having as this story begins?
After causing the Nike-like company he works for to lose roughly about a billion dollars, Drew (Orlando Bloom) is promptly fired for his mistake and dumped by his
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