The Antipodean

I am a huge Cameron Crowe fan and have been looking forward to checking out "Elizabethtown," which I hope to do this weekend -- but am sad to see the reviews aren't going his way -- 33% at Rotten Tomatoes, owch! Still, I'll make up my mind for myself when I see it, hopefully tomorrow. I'm curious to see how Orlando does when he's in a "modern" role and admit I like Dunst even if she's kind of an acquired taste for some. Heck, I even quite liked "Vanilla Sky" which I know wasn't universally acclaimed.

So, anyone else seen "Elizabethtown" yet? Surely I'm not the only Crowe fan here.

Seantn

I like Vanilla Sky too, and it only got 39% on RT.

scott shelton

Some RT selection...

"Two stories fighting for dominance - One full of the usual Crowe magic for romantic fantasy and the other bogged down in slapstick and middle class hick humor."
-- Erik Childress, EFILMCRITIC.COM

"A dreary, self-indulgent, overscripted train wreck of a film."
-- Bill Muller, ARIZONA REPUBLIC

"Elizabethtown is an irresistibly comfy experience, like a wearing a thick sweater during the bitterest days of winter, or listening to an Abba CD at top volume."
-- Brian Orndorf, EFILMCRITIC.COM

"Cameron Crowe's tale of romance and redemptions struggles to sustain a tone of bittersweet whimsy, but its emotions are in the end as undercooked as its ideas."
-- A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES

"What ends up on screen is a jumbled, if good-natured, mess."
-- Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

Geofferson

Ebert had some good words to say about it. I saw 15 minutes of it on the BB preview disc and am intrigued. Will probably check it out over the weekend.

Decker

It's a bummer. I've been following Jeffery Wells' pieces on this film for months and the writing was clearly on the wall; this film is apparently a mess and the re-edit didn't seem to do much to improve it. What a shame.


full disclosure : I've loved everything Crowe has done until Vanilla Sky, which I thought was unbearable long and silly with almost nothing going for it except Cameron Diaz's performance and the usual great soundtrack. I'm likely to skip this and see either In Her Shoes or Good Night, And Good Luck instead.

lamphorn

I do like Cameron Crowe's movies a lot, but the trailer for this one just really turns me off. It looks like a Garden State remake. And it has that kind of trailer they did for "Shining", with the overused Peter Gabriel song.

Just another 30-something year old boy who loses his dad and has to go back home to finally grow up... and meets a hot chick.

Needless to say, I didn't really like Garden State. Funny moments but dopey story. That's what the trailer for Elizabethtown came across to me as. I hope it's good, cause I'm sure I'll see it since I loved Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire.

Groucho

I was going to say the same thing as lamphorn, this looks like Garden State redux.

I knew this would get shitty reviews because Cameron Crowes been making comments like "I made this one for the people, not for the critics" which is the sort of thing filmmakers say when they know they've got a stinker on their hands.

Patman

I couldn't believe the AJC (Atlanta paper) gave it a D-. Ouch!

Rypro 525

I know the movie was shunned at toronto for the premiere and Crowe went back and did some trimming but it seems like that didn't work.

mdc3000

I love all of Crowe's films...Vanilla Sky included, but this one was just alright. It had some great moments, but these great moments are buried in a larger "fiasco" of a picture. It has some great moments, but not enough to sustain the movie. It's not a total trainwreck, but for a Cameron Crowe movie, it is extremely disappointing. It does have some extreme parallels to Garden State, but I personally prefer Braff's film a hell of a lot more.

The highlights are the Chuck & Cindy's wedding stuff, the learn to listen video and a few of the family moments. Kirsten Dunsts gets a few good lines, but her character is like a less fun version of Sam from Garden State and after a while, her and Orlando's not quite a relationship game starts to get grating. Hopefully it'll be enough to merit the money you spent, but I'm disappointed and hope that maybe there will be a director's cut dvd down the line that can maybe fix this film up a bit...although, I don't know if there is as much there to save as CC had hoped.

MATT

You know you're in trouble when the TRAILER is more moving, whimsical and entertaining than the movie as a whole.

DGibFen

In the latest issue of Paste magazine, they ran an interview with Crowe. At one point, he saw Garden State and noted the similarities between his movie and Braff's.

Caught a matinee showing of the film. It's OK - the movie itself can't figure out what it wants to accomplish, and it shows. Orlando manages to carry the film pretty well. (And since I live in Louisville, KY, the 1:30 show was nearly full - and people just had to cheer when the 2 minute montage of Louisville shots appeared.)

CardiffGiant

Hey, I just got back from seeing Elizabethtown and I don't really understand where the negative criticism is coming from. I heard horrible reviews about Kirsten Dunst and I thought she did fine - not great - but fine. Orlando Bloom did a great job and the film overall was well put together. I don't know, from the trailers I wasn't expecting much either, but it turned out to be another (in my opinion) Crowe classic. It's just one man's opinion and I'm not telling people how to feel, but for those on the fence and like Crowe's style and use of music, this succeeds where all of his other films succeeded.

William Fuld

barf

scott shelton

So you're not an Abba fan?

dolphinboy

My hometown paper didn't like it that much either. We plan to see it tomorrow; even if it's disappointing, I don't think it will be D+ bad.


'Elizabethtown'

GRADE: D+

Rated PG-13 for language and some sexual references

Running time: 123 minutes

rexinnih

I'll still see it. Dissapointing about the reviews though.

The Antipodean

Well, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Not his best, but not the fiasco some critics will lead you to believe. Maybe it's just Cameron's turn to be the whipping boy, because I can name ten worse movies this year alone, easily. And I would argue that while it and 'Garden State' share a theme, 'Elizabethtown' is the far more effective movie at dealing with it -- I liked 'State' OK, but Braff's void of a character really got old for me. Bloom was surprisingly decent here and the whole story worked for me. (Best use of "Free Bird" in a movie ever, too!)

Anyway, if you're a Crowe fan, you'll like it. Very sweet-natured and genuine, a little shapeless in some ways but I still sat through most of the screening with a big smile on my face. A- for me.

Patman

Well, I saw it, and it was so devoid of fleshing out the characters (for a film with a running time over 135 minutes, that's pretty hard to do, but Crowe manages to do so in spectacular fashion), so they are alway at arm's length away, or further. When you write a film in which your audience doesn't care for the lead characters, the film is in big trouble, and that's the main failing of this film.

Claire (Kirsten Dunst) just shows up and plays perky flight attendant/life coach/cheerleader to Drew (Orlando Bloom) for no good reason except that's what she has to do. Claire is reduced to being a plot device, and the film just doesn't have much to say. Drew's mother is a total cliched character, and his sister doesn't have much to do either. Drew's relatives in Elizabethtown just aren't all that interesting.

The other thing that has started to bother me is the use of popular songs to tell the audience how they should be feeling at a given point in the film, instead of earning those feelings with good screenwriting and acting performances. Crowe has finally hit the wall with his penchance to use songs in his films.

Can't recommend the film at all, even for a matinee (Go see Wallace & Gromit or Serenity, instead).

I give it 1.75 stars, or a grade of C-.

Wazootyman

I saw the film earlier tonight, and my afterwards the only thing I could think was "Goddamn Cameron Crowe!" I loved his previous films. The Almost Famous director's cut and Say Anything are amongst some of my favorite movies. The characterization is just amazing in these films. I love the characters and it tells a good story.

I was weary about Elizabethtown. I figured it'd have the same good characterization, and if Bloom and Dunst could do a decent job, things might be alright. Well... Dunst and Bloom weren't the worst thing about the movie (I'd put them at 3rd and 4th respectively). It seemed to me like the worst part of the movie was Crowe as a writer, followed by Crowe as a director. At no point did the Claire/Drew relationship really move me. I mean the Penny Lane / William relationship was nuanced and great, but the Elizabethtown relationship always came through as hollow and not worthy of my time.

To top off the lack of a strong central relationship, Crowe fills things up with southern Stereotypes, which to some came off as funny, but to me was just a waste of screen time. Instead of making fun of the South, Crowe could have developed the main relationship a whole lot better.

Plus, I love Ryan Adams, but HORRIBLE use of Come Pick Me Up. My main problem with it was how the relationship developed during the course of that song. Sure, Dunst was cheering up Bloom, but that's about it. At no point did I believe a relationship was developing. Then when they started doing jigs for no reason whatsoever, it looked insanely bizarre with Come Pick Me Up playing in the background

scott shelton

I didn't think he was making fun of the south at all. It felt like a Kentucky family. I didn't see any dudes wearing burlap sacks or incest - anything outlandish like that.

Hell, I thought the film was a VALENTINE to the south.

What was so bad about the characterizations?

The Antipodean

I totally agree. There was real affection here, and no real mocking. One of my favorite things about the movie was how WELL it captured that Southern feeling. I lived for many years in Mississippi and went to college there and have family there, and Crowe just nailed that feeling. One of my favorite little moments was when Drew got out of the car in Elizabethtown and he hears the enormous buzz of insects. That little detail was spot-on.

dolphinboy

2 thumbs up from Ebert and Roeper.

Wife and I saw it last night and we would give it a solid B

We came home and watched High Tension...talk about a change of pace.

mookyman

There was a lot in this movie (BONER) that made me cringe, but there was also a lot to love. While I'm mixed overall on the movie, there were scenes and moments, (The early "My Father's Gun" scene, "Learning to Listen," the entire road trip) that were just perfect. So while I can only recommend it with reservations, I'm still very glad that Crowe made the film, and I'm not sure it could have turned out any other way.

Giles

cringe is a good word there mookyman - if Cameron Crowe had more time writing a script and less on the selection of the film's songs he might have succeeded. Here it's a very slow train crash in two hours time. What a waste and bitter disappointment.

I thought it was

deluis

I actually got to see this film two weeks before it's release at Paramount Studios, so I think it's esentially the same as the one that is in theaters. My reaction is that the movie started slow and eventually picked up when he gets to Elizabethtown. The movie felt too long as well, many parts could have used even more trimming apart from what was already cut. It also felt like the movie had too many endings.

More of the cross country driving part could have been cut, not everyting. Sure it was interesting to see the places he visited, but I didn't feel it really added a lot of importance to the movie. Another part that could have been cut was Susan Sarandon dancing. It was for me the most annoying part in the movie.