It was inevitable Cameron Crowe would make a film that feels like a two-hour mix-tape.
The director of Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous is as renowned for his intense passion for music -- specifically, the rock of the 1960s and '70s, when he came of age as a teenage correspondent for Rolling Stone -- as for the movies he makes.
And in Elizabethtown, the songs -- from Tom Petty to The Hollies to Elton John -- are relentless and, remarkably for Crowe, misguided.
Rather than embellish a scene, Crowe, for the first time, uses the music as a crutch -- relying on the songs to do the emotional heavylifting for him.
But in many ways, the film, too, is a mix-tape that could have been titled Cameron Crowe's Greatest Hits. As in Jerry Maguire, the hero, Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is a young man whose life doesn't truly begin until he loses the job he has been devoted to.
As in Almost Famous, the women in Drew's life are omnipresent and prescient, while the men are absent or aloof. And as in all of Crowe's films, the protagonist is saved -- spiritually anyway -- by a woman who is too good, charismatic and wise to exist anywhere but in Crowe's fertile imagination.
In Elizabethtown, the role of muse/saviour is played by Kirsten Dunst, an actress so genetically winning she is almost believable as Claire, a flight attendant who meets Drew while he's on his way to Kentucky after the death of his father.
But Dunst's inspired casting -- aside from supporting turns by the wonderful Susan Sarandon and the epicly-entertaining Alec Baldwin -- is about all that feels right about this creative misfire, which, sorry to say, ranks as Crowe's most flawed, least memorable, film to date.
Much of the problem lies in Crowe's own script, which is thick with his signatures -- clever characters, witty dialogue, colourful situations -- but lacks the attention to detail that would ground this whirlwind of whimsy in something approaching reality.
Worse of all is boring, bland Bloom who -- unlike Tom Cruise in Maguire -- possesses none of the magnetism needed for a role that requires him to fill up the screen.
Show him the money? Show him the door.
This film is rated PG
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