Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Elizabethtown (2005)

Average user rating

No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Cameron Crowe (‘Vanilla Sky’, ‘Almost Famous’) has pulled a ready-made collage of movie clichés out of the bag and made an uplifting-but-tender, coming-of-age movie about homecoming. Or should that be a tender-but-uplifting, homecoming movie about coming of age? Either way, anyone with a drop of cynicism in their blood will be chewing their fist for the majority of this oh-so-good-hearted tale of grief, love and personal discovery. A reckless approach to depression and (attempted) suicide mars this sentimental story from the beginning. Orlando Bloom is Drew, a successful, twenty-something, workaholic trainer designer who loses his job in spectacular fashion. This calamity – which prompts his near-suicide – coincides with the death of Drew’s distant father, an event which takes him reluctantly to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where he is reunited with his father’s colourful Southern clan. A chance meeting en route with a pretty air hostess, Claire (Kirsten Dunst) marks the beginning of Drew’s re-entry to normal life and his realisation that there’s more to life than work (oh, how sage).Most of the film involves the preparation and execution of a memorial service for Drew’s dad, the run-up to which coincides with the first tentative steps of Drew and Claire’s courtship. But the last fifteen minutes have Drew embarking alone on a healing road trip, accompanied by a detailed map and a CD of music compiled by Dunst’s character. We witness the dreaded Hollywood notion of a character’s ‘journey’ become reality as Bloom awakens the man within by taking to the highway and visiting several, life-affirming monuments to recent American history – including the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot. The entire enterprise smacks of wish-fulfilment provoked by middle-age male guilt. Uplifting, it most certainly ain’t.

Author: DC

Time Out London Issue 1837: November 2-9 2005

Email Tweet Share