Nov. 3, 2005 – If nothing else, Elizabethtown has inspired radically diverging reviews. The vastly talented director Cameron Crowe's new flick has been called everything from "sweet and good-hearted," by Roger Ebert, to simply "galling."
Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe, (the author of the review calling the movie"galling"), says "Watch out for smart, perceptive film makers who make movies about their fathers. 'Big Fish' was Tim Burton on paxil, vacant and even-tempered.
"Now, sadly," Morris continues, "Crowe has decided to pay his filial respects. The movie is Crowe's most nakedly square picture yet."
That's all well and good on an intellectual level, but some of us are in the mood these days for "square." In fact, as an antidote to the current administration's behavior, "square" comes as a sort of relief. At least "square" is honest.
Well, here's the story. It's gets sort of complicated.
Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) has just managed to do himself out of a job, and his shoe manufacturing company out of millions of dollars with his design of the Spasmodica, a shoe that, among other unshoelike attributes, whistles.
He is in his West coast home preparing to end it all when he gets a call that his father has beat him to it – not a suicide; just an ordinary death.
So Baylor heads to Elizabethtown, Ky. where his dad had met his demise while enjoying a hometown reunion. After some rather bizarre meetings with the local folk – they despise Baylor's mom Hollie Baylor (Susan Sarandon) because she ran off with the senior Baylor and took him to California – the junior Baylor heads back to California.
And this is where the fun begins. He finds himself the only passenger on his flight, and he is raptly attended to by the only flight attendant, Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst). Colburn is smitten. She takes an abalone-like hold on Baylor, directing him on how to live his life, and other related matters such as falling hopelessly in love with her.
Ebert says the movie "has some real laughs, and we can just about accept Claire's obsessive romantic behavior, because, if someone is going to insist that you have to fall in love, there are many possibilities more alarming than Claire."
Crowe set a high-water mark with Almost Famous, his story of the a teenager who gets to go on tour with a rock band, and comes under the tutelage of real-life renegade journalist Lester Bangs. The movie was Kate Hudson's break-out role as a band groupie. The critics loved it, the rock world loved it and moviegoers loved it.
Elizabethtown isn't Almost Famous. However, for a little more than two hours of entertainment, grab some homemade fudge, some popcorn, or something else equally "square," and indulge yourself. It's honest fun.
It is playing at Market Square East.