'elizabethtown': my very first movie review!

my friend took me to a siff (seattle international film festival) screening of 'elizabethtown' on monday night. i'd heard horrible reviews of it, mostly from the toronto film festival, where cameron crowe screened a woefully uncut (hence like, 3 1/2 hour long version) of the movie, with the caveat, 'i haven't cut it for realease yet, so please don't judge it based on length.' but they did anyway, it got TRASHED, and cameron crowe left the festival early to fly back and take a machete to the movie.

so my friend and i were thinking, sure. they judged it based on length but not based on the quality of the film! it's cameron crowe! come on! he's so cool! we love him very much! 'almost famous' is my favorite movie of all time! he can do no wrong! let's give him a chance. plus, i must say, i was very curious about young orlando bloom, since i'd never seen him in anything but big huge ensemble costume dramas where really all he had to do was stand there and look pretty. so yay.

i will try to sumerize the mish-mash of a "plot": a young shoe design prodigy (????) named drew, played by the aforementioned pretty pretty pretty orlando bloom (soooo pretty) is working for a nike-esque company in portland, oregon. he designs a shoe (??????????????????) that's supposed to be the Next Big Thing. the shoe (??!!) goes nowhere and loses the company over $900 million dollars. in a fantastic cameo by alec baldwin, playing the owner of this fictional shoe company, drew is shown all of the things the company will have to cut because he cost it so much money with his 'fiasco'. and he gets fired. so, oh that's too bad.

so drew goes home to commit suicide when the phone rings (and yes, it's about as quick, compelling, and believable as that sentence). it's his sister, telling him his dad has died and he has to fly to elizabethtown (in kentucky? i think) to retrieve the body (he's died while on a trip home visiting family) and bring it back to oregon for burial. so he ditches the suicide idea for the time being and goes to his sister and mother (played, quite surprisingly, by susan sarandon), then he flies to elizabethtown to meet relatives he's never, er, met before, because his mother hates them all.

on the way there, on a near-empty plane, he meets a deeply irritating flight attendant, played by a deeply irritating kirsten dunst. while mostly it seems drew feels the same way about claire (dunst) as we do, i.e. irritated, there's one moment when their eyes meet where you can actually feel the connection in the audience. it's one of the better moments in the movie, as it's absolutely palpable.

so he tells her he's going to elizabethtown, and judging from her horrific, in-and-out southern accent, she's kind of from the area? or something? so she draws him a map and tells him not to miss exit 60b, and keeps repeating it and shouting it in the airport as he's going for his rental car, etc., like it's a number we should all remember for later. which, well, it isn't.

he gets momentarily lost but finally ends up there, meets the family, who are all quirky and southern and listen to lynard skynard and all that, as we all know, all southern people do. he's got an aunt played by paula dean, from tv's food network! and she's actually one of the least offensive people in the movie! miracle!

he ends up calling claire, who's left her phone number on the map for him (apparently she thought he was as pretty as all people with eyesight do), and for reasons not made entirely clear, he calls in a fit of desperate boredom (i guess?). they end up talking all night, then meeting for sunrise, but in an awesome cameron crowe moment, as they sit there for what should be a really romantic moment, they're both so exhausted that they go their respective ways.

so there's that.

then there's this weird push and pull with what should happen with his father's body (mom wants it cremated and brought back to oregon, family wants it... er... not, and buried in the family plot in elizabethtown). so that happens for a while.

things with claire kind of heat up, and they end up getting together, but then they aren't together, but we don't actually know why, since it seems she's not being honest about having a boyfriend...? oh who knows.

then the mom and sister come out for the memorial service, and mom ends up melting the ice between her and the family with a rousing eulogy which includes a HIGHLY inappropriate story about a boner. heh heh. wow, she's a real fireplug, aint she?

then drew drives home and scatters his father's ashes (he ends up getting cremated) along the way while finally saying all the things he's wanted to say to him. or something?? with absolutely no backstory on the relationship between father and son, it's tough to know what the deal is there.

anyway, so he scatters his ashes in all these places that are meaningful for drew, while his father's instructions were to scatter his ashes over the ocean. so we're not sure why this should be cool, but apparently it is.

anyway, blah blah blah. and i won't give away the end, which is absolutely not exciting or interesting in the least, in case you're bored or drunk or high one night and want to see this thing.

i don't know if it would have been better before crowe's slash and burn job, but it is possible the worst edited movie i've ever seen in my life. drew gets angry with no build-up at all, so the audience is left absolutely baffled. like, drew gets in the car, immediately misses his exit to elizabethtown, immediately pulls over, starts pounding his fists on the steering wheel in a huge temper tantrum, then the next thing you see, he's pulling into town and it's this huge relief. huh? you were lost for like, 15 seconds? why are you so angry again?

it's as if he took all of his movies and put them in a blender, and it spit this one out. there is zero character development. who the fuck is claire supposed to be? quirky? cute? funny? insightful? just a nice girl? no one knows. but i do know that kirsten dunst can't do a southern accent to save her damn LIFE.

and are we supposed to feel sorry for drew? he shows no emotion, other than kind of quirky bemusement, at being depressed and wanting to commit suicide, and he appears to feel nothing for his father or his father's death. it would be one thing if there was backstory to an uncaring father, but all the minimal backstory into his father is of this really nice guy and good dad. so... hm.

orlando bloom is PAINful. i have never seen a worse performance, and yes, i'm including keanu reeves in that. he is tense and awkward and unnatural and self-conscience, he has the worst timing i've ever seen. He either waaaaaaaaaay overacts ala tom cruise (only 10 times worse) and yells and freaks out, or he is completely wooden and lifeless, and stands there looking mildly amused through the whole thing. there are one or two quiet moments where you can tell, if he had the right training, he could actually be a decent actor. but this was such a heavy role for him, and he just fell apart under it. and his american accent is worse than ewan mcgregor's (was. it's fine now. ;o). he sounds overdubbed most of the time, with exaggerated words that shouldn't be exaggerated. if you know what i mean. literally, 1/2 way through the movie, you're PRAYING that crowe doesn't give him any more to say. it's that painful to watch him.

i normally don't really mind kirsten dunst, since the things i've seen her in ('virgin suicides,' 'crazy beautiful,' etc.) have been good and she's been able to carry them. but it was if she acted DOWN to orlando bloom's level, and gave quite possibly the worst performance of her career to date.

i thought susan sarandon was fine, but her character was so one dimensional, you couldn't root for her or hate her. she was just... there. the rest of the family were good, if not ridiculously stereotypical. but at least the acting was good. and thank GOD they surrounded orlando bloom with decent actors, otherwise it would have been unwatchable.

there were moments here and there where you wished he would have spent more time on them, like the road trip/grieving process at the end could have been cool if there was more time spent on developing these characters and that the mood was maintained throughout the rest of the movie. instead it felt tacked on to the end, didn't really feel like part of the same movie, and you really just wanted it to be over at that point, so who cares.

the music of course was great, always appropriate, always cool. and they even threw in a little my morning jacket with the elton john standards, so that was awesome.

otherwise, although i really do love cameron crowe so much, i have to say, this is just, to quote the movie, 'a fiasco.'