Cameron Crowe's Heavy-Handed Touch Felt All Over Elizabethtown

Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, Elizabethtown is more of the same from the former Rolling Stone writer...multiplied tenfold. In almost every movie Crowe is attached to, there are memorable lines, unforgettable characters, and an ability to relate to those same characters. But unlike Jerry McGuire ("Mo' Money, Mo' Money, Mo' Money" and "You complete me"), Crowe seems to force feed the oft-repeated quotes down the viewer's throats. "We are each other's substitutes," and "I'm easy to remember, but so hard to forget" are just two examples of Crowe's heavy-handed approach to recreating "You complete me." In Elizabethtown it appears Crowe is just trying too hard.

Orlando Bloom plays Drew Baylor, a shoe executive who costs his company $1 billion and is about to be fired. Seconds before he is about to kill himself (death by exercise takes on a whole new meaning in this ingenious suicide solution), he is called to Kentucky for his father's funeral. On the flight he meets Claire Colbourn (Kirsten Dunst), a free spirit who will be his guide back to a true perspective on life...or at least as true as a romantic comedy can accomplish.

Crowe manages to intermingle the two messages of this film fairly evenly. On the one hand, Elizabethtown is your basic, run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, with all the standard musical montages of our fair couple falling in love, deciding they can't be together and eventually ending up together. But this movie is also about a boy and his father, even though the father is dead throughout the entire.

Through flashbacks we learn how close Drew and his father were and how in their adult lives that closeness slowly disintegrated. The pair's cross country road trip (yes, Drew makes a cross country trip with his dead Dad) leading up to the film's inevitable end will make every grown man want to call his Dad.

But the most enjoyable surprise in Crowe's latest flick is Kirsten Dunst's performance. Dunst has always been better in art house or independent films (If you haven't seen The Cat's Meow or Levity, you're missing what Dunst is truly capable of). In big budget movies like Spiderman and Bring It On she appeared to be just collecting a paycheck or creating images for the male teen fantasy. She has finally brought her love and appreciation for the script out of the independent genre and taken it to a big budget Hollywood release in Elizabethtown. But, as all of his other credits, Orlando Bloom still seems to be coasting on his pretty boy looks.

If you want to see a chick flick that's not a true chick flick, you could do no worse than plunking down your hard earned dollars on Elizabethtown. Dunst's performance and Crowe's choice of music alone are enough to counteract the bland performance of Bloom and Crowe's belief that he can still create the ultimate one-liner.