Elizabethtown

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

Somewhere between the brilliant Cameron Crowe of Almost Famous and the rambling Crowe who gave us Vanilla Sky lies Elizabethtown, an amiable, uneven comedy about a young man's journey of self-discovery. When Drew (Orlando Bloom) travels back to his hometown for his father's funeral, he finds unexpected romance with a stewardess (Kirsten Dunst) who is so eternally optimistic, she makes Winnie the Pooh look like Darth Vader before his coffee. Bloom, playing American for the first time, weighs the film down with a performance so forced and unconvincing that it never really recovers from the obvious miscasting. Crowe based this screenplay on his own father's funeral, and the problem may be that it's just too close to the vest to connect. Making matters worse is the chemistry between Dunst and Bloom, foreshadowed by an endless cell phone sequence between the twosome early in the film that will have audiences wanting to hang up. Even if this is half-baked Crowe, however, there are moments when he is definitely on his game—particularly one scene where Bloom steals a beer meant for a wedding party staying in the same hotel and is confronted by an overly emotional, drunken groom. Yet it's that kind of great off-the-wall writing that makes the rest of this good-natured, but deeply flawed, flick such a major disappointment.

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