Cameron Crowe’s new movie is like a big shaggy dog, shaking wildly with excitement to please you. It’s hard not to feel affection for the critter but it is also hard to ignore that it is shedding and slobbering all over you too.
Crowe has always been a big softy, the rare filmmaker who prefers to let his emotions show, no matter how gooey, rather than the more in style ironic cynical stance. He loves his characters madly and often puts them in times or places that he loves too. Because he hangs it all out there, he skates a fine line. On one side he can hit all the right notes and earn the love of critics but on the other side he risks a beating at the hands of those very same critics as they smell weakness and pounce. Previous efforts like Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous have gone over well with the critics. Sadly, Elizabethtown falls on the other side of the line. Elizabethtown is by no means a bad movie but it isn’t a great movie and critics seem to relish the chance to smack around a successful director for failing to measure up to the very mark they themselves set in the past. Reading reviews of this movie and watching it for yourself are likely to lead to head scratching as you try to make the two meet up in the middle. There is a certain darkness to be found in the hearts of critics. They truly relish finding a new talent and trumpeting it to the world as evidence of their great taste and thorough examination of the movies. But once pushed up into the limelight, the very same people championed by critics can become their piñata if they ever slip. Look at the way George Lucas was savaged over The Phantom Menace or Scorsese for Gangs of New York or Shyamalan for Signs. Certainly none of these are awful movies but they were treated as if they were amongst the very worst movies ever made. I’ve spent a lot of time watching the worst movies ever made and these weren’t even close. Actually, I’m rather fond of all three. The abuse sent Crowe’s way is a bit more mysterious though. While long the recipient of solid reviews, he has not enjoyed much in the way of huge box office success. Only Jerry Maguire ranks as a big hit amongst his movies. A backlash usually is reserved for someone who has experienced too much success. In this case, it seems more as if Mr. Crowe has simply failed to continue as a bright shiny object to hold the critics’ attention. Merely being good will no longer be enough. He needs to be brilliant to earn his praise now. Another possibility is that the weak reaction is mainly due to the presence of leading man Orlando Bloom. Mr. Bloom has seen his star rising very fast due to his appearance in The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies. Subsequent roles in Pirates of the Caribbean, Troy and Kingdom of Heaven have assured his place as a staple of any movie that features swordplay and/or fantasy elements. Frequent questions in reviews of Mr. Bloom’s ability to carry a movie without the aid of special effects indicates that critics simply aren’t ready to give the dashing young man a fair shake. The movie centers on Drew Baylor (Bloom), a shoe designer whose latest design is a failure of apocalyptic levels, costing his company close to a billion dollars and Drew his job. He is seriously planning suicide when he gets word that his father has died. Drew’s mother (Susan Sarandon) is such a mess that Drew is dispatched to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to collect his father’s body and return home. His father had been visiting family in his hometown when he suffered the fatal heart attack. Drew grabs a red eye flight, one which is entirely empty except for him and a solitary flight attendant. This is Claire (Kirsten Dunst), an aggressively chipper and helpful woman who is massively determined to force a Meet Cute with Drew. Arriving in Kentucky, Drew finds his father’s family as an eclectic but friendly bunch that loved his father fiercely and have very strong feelings about his memorial. Drew has to wrestle with the loss of his father as well as his own failure. Claire injects herself into the middle of all this and they begin a charming, if muddled courtship. Cameron Crowe’s strength is always in finding the emotions in a story and making them vivid. He makes his characters real people and treats them with great respect. That is very much the case here. He doesn’t force the emotions, instead letting his characters deal intelligently with situations from which the emotions flow naturally. The downside of this is that in this particular film, Crowe seems a bit unsure what he wants out of all this or where he thinks it should go. It includes his trademark use of pop music to highlight the emotions and story. It all works quite well scene by scene but doesn’t manage to come completely together as a story. Drew and Claire make a charming couple and have a wonderfully charming (if wildly improbable) way to end the movie. This is not Crowe’s best work but it still succeeds as an enjoyable way to pass the time. Earlier works like Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire were just as good with the emotions but far more sharply drawn characters and stories. To abuse this movie as a failure is simply a display of cynicism and not an honest appraisal. I can think of dozens of movies this year that are far less deserving of your time. Myself, I remain happy to sit back and let Crowe tell me a story and envelop me in his cheerfully romantic view of the world. - John Shea
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