CORPORATE LINE: Hours after a ruinous product debut, suicidal industrial designer Drew Baylor learns of his father’s sudden death. As the only son, Drew must travel to their small hometown of Elizabethtown, Kentucky to attend to his father’s memorial. On the flight to Kentucky, Drew meets Claire, a quick-witted flight attendant, who helps him navigate the rough waters ahead and proves that amazing things happen when you least expect them.
THE MOVIE: Elizabethtown tried to be better. It seems like the basis for a really good story is in there somewhere and you wonder why we never see it. Part of the problem is that the story gets caught up in unnecessary stories and clichés. The gets too tangled up in the story. The subplot with the mother, aunt and uncle, and cousin is unimportant and sloppy. We get so bored with them that we don’t care about the main story or characters.
When director Cameron Crowe focuses on the main characters you start to get involved. Crowe knows how to capture our interest and to make us love them. It would have been better if we had more to love and less to hate. Two different actors might have made a huge difference. Orlando Bloom is wooden and Kristen Dunst is common. Crowe has hit the nail on the head with casting for every movie previous—Dunst and Bloom are huge let downs.
FRANKLY: Ultimately Elizabethtown works in dog years—every twenty minutes feels like an hour.
+ Charlie Craine
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.