Elizabethtown film review

certificate_12A

ELIZABETHTOWN

At his best, director Cameron Crowe is able to create moments of heartfelt tenderness; at his worst he is prone to wallow in excruciating and excessive soppiness. Elizabethtown is far more inclined to the latter. And at an interminable two hours, what occasional goodwill had been engendered along the way is dissipated by the film's protracted finale.

The film begins with Orlando Bloom's character, Drew Baylor, posing the question, what is the difference between a failure and a fiasco? It's not only a recurring theme, but also turns out to be rather a prescient opening. Baylor's reply is that "any fool can accomplish a failure," which confirms Crowe is obviously no fool.

Elizabethtown is a meandering mess, as lost as its central character. Dedicated to Crowe's father, the film is clearly a personal lament on an unfulfilled relationship. On one level it's about how ambition exacts a telling price. On another it's about identity. But the result has been clouded by Crowe's emotional proximity to the subject and his lack of restraint.

There are undoubtedly parallels to be drawn between Crowe, with his preternatural success as a rock journalist, and Baylor. An overachiever Baylor, has devoted eight years of his life to designing a revolutionary shoe that lost his slimy company boss (Alec Baldwin) $972 million. His life and career in ruin, he is on the verge of suicide when he gets a call from his sister Heather (Judy Greer) informing him of his father's death while visiting relatives in Kentucky. As the "responsible one" in the family, which includes his hyper kinetic mother (Susan Sarandon), he is entrusted with bringing his father home to Oregon.

On the flight east he is pestered by the exuberant flight attendant Claire (Kirsten Dunst). When he later finds himself alone in a hotel, with no one else returning his calls, he phones her and so begins their disjointed relationship, one based on vulnerability rather than passion. Her candid exuberance, which barely masks a desperate loneliness, seems to offer Drew a refreshing change rather a legitimate potential for something lasting. "I'm not used to girls like you," Drew confesses. And were it not for his emotional upheaval, it's clear Clair wouldn't register much of a blip on his romantic radar.