Films
Features
|
|
Elizabethtown
By David Wallace Dear Cameron Crowe,
You sure do have good taste in music. I love Ryan Adams and My
Morning Jacket. They really capture the American South in that way
that only artist’s from that part of the world can capture.
Young voices that sound at once world weary and innocent, all cigarettes
and late nights. Even a young Elton John gets his Dixie on with
your use of the oft overlooked “My Father’s Gun.”
I don’t think enough people know Lindsay Buckingham’s
gem of a song “Shut Us Down”; kudos to you for putting
it in your movie. And Tom Petty? Who doesn’t love Tom Petty?
All white people love Tom Petty. Even Nancy Wilson’s score
sounds like the south. The mellow acoustic guitar strumming with
banjos and harmonicas flanked left and right. You really know how
to compile and create a fantastic soundtrack. Building a movie to
accompany said soundtrack, however, seems to have eluded you this
time.
Kirsten Dunst is charming. The girl scarcely needs to talk her
face is so expressive. She could light an eclipse with that smile.
And that Orlando Bloom is sure pretty. He’s got that going
for him. Their sappy relationship, sweet as it is, is so unrealistic
it’s difficult to stomach. Bloom’s scenario is real
enough. A sneaker designer, who’s just designed the fugliest
kicks ever, bankrupting the corporation he works for, gets a call
from his sister who delivers the sad news that his father has passed
away while visiting family in Elizabethtown, KY. He’s asked
by his sister and mother to collect his ashes and return them to
their home in Oregon. Not so far fetched, right? So, why put him
on a flight where he is by all accounts the only passenger? He’s
flying to Louisville for Christ’s sake. It may not be LA,
but people fly there everyday. And, while I’m willing to suspend
my disbelief that airline stewardesses can look as lovely as Kirsten
Dunst, I have a hard time accepting that they’d spend the
better part of a flight annoying the only passenger on the plane.
Stranger still is that Orlando’s character would pick up the
phone and call her the next day.
While Drew (Bloom) and Claire (Dunst) are the centerpiece of your
saccharine sweet romantic (?)- comedy (?), there’s the sub-plots;
Drew hasn’t seen his family in Elizabethtown in many years.
They had a falling out with his mother (Susan Sarandon, the real
ringer in this movie). He needs to mend some fences to have his
redemption moment. There’s the relationship he missed out
on with his dad due to his spending years designing the sneaker
smelled round the world. Even minor characters get in on the muddled
fun. Cousin Jessie (Paul Schneider) can’t discipline his kid
because he’s still living out his rock and roll dreams. Jessie’s
father Dale, (Loudon Wainwright) wishes he were more responsible.
Your film is all ambition and no execution. It can’t decide
whether to be sweet or melancholy or epic or dramatic. It’s
rarely any of the above. It’s always predictable. Every scene
is set up and painted with such broad strokes that we’re never
given an opportunity to be surprised or pleased. The inevitable
ending doesn’t come soon enough, as you spend the last twenty
minutes teaching us about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Oklahoma
City Bombing, Sun Records and Memphis being the home to early Rock
and Roll and the Blues. See, I don’t need to be taught about
Dr. King. Or Elvis or tragedy’s like the one in Oklahoma City.
You’re better at turning us all on to great music. You made
a hell of a mix tape at the end there. You even put the Shins on
it (it just wouldn’t be a music heavy movie without the Shins).
But, next time, send me the Podcast. Because, “Elizabethtown
maybe a heck of a place to find yourself”, but it’s
not much of a movie.
Love,
David Wallace
|
