Movie Review: Elizabethtown

Cameron Crowe is the director of two movies I absolutely adore, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. I haven't seen Vanilla Sky yet, but didn't want to miss Elizabethtown as well. Last night I saw the movie on DVD. The movie isn't great but is the kind of small well-made film I love.

The movie is about two deliciously eccentric characters who fall in love in the middle of the wackiest memorial service ever. Orlando Bloom plays Drew Baylor, a shoe designer, who has just lost his job after he loses the company 972 million dollars, which can be "rounded off to one billion dollars". The shoe he designs flops, and in a week the news would be out. This is the week that the story is set in.

Drew is "saved" by his father's sudden death in his hometown of Elizabethtown. He now has to go and take care of his dad's funeral. On the way, he meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), an air hostess. Claire is just the sort of girl anybody would want to meet when they are feeling blue. She is cute, bubbly, vivacious and full of bustling energy.

Arriving at Elizabethtown, Drew goes around offering everybody his condolences until he is told that they are usually incoming when you have lost your dad. Earlier, at his company Drew does a similar sort of a thing. Whenever he runs into someone, he says "I am fine". You really have to watch both scenes to know what I am talking about. They are hilarious.

Elizabethtown is also a first class example of a movie that stands apart from the rest by the sheer quality of its writing. Sample the lines that end the movie:

Drew: No true fiasco ever began as a quest for mere adequacy. A motto of the British Special Air Force is: 'Those who risk, win.' A single green vine shoot is able to grow through cement. The Pacific Northwestern salmon beats itself bloody on it's quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream against the current, with a single purpose, sex of course, but also... life.

Much of the writing is terse and snappy and has a wonderful quality to it. Phrases like the "flurry of our almost-romance" dot the screenplay.

Cameron Crowe is also a big fan of Bob Dylan. In fact, he wrote the liner notes and designed the book you get along with Biograph, the three-CD collection of Dylan songs. Crowe also has a great ear for music. Elizabethtown too has one hell of a soundtrack just like Crowe's previous movies.

If you like the odd sort of romantic movies, a staple American diet really, this is your kinda movie.