Sole movie
Elizabethtown
dir. Cameron Crowe; starring: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon
2/5
Can a shoe ever be enough to drive a man to suicide? Apparently so, if we are to believe writer/director Cameron Crowe’s new offering, Elizabethtown. Drew (Bloom, donning an interesting accent) is saved from his “dark appointment with destiny” only by the timely demise of his father, and subsequently finds himself in a quaint Midwestern town, attempting to organise a funeral.
What follows is a strange mixture of love story, social satire and life-affirming optimism, populated by quirky characters.
Dunst takes a break from her usual girl-next-door roles in the form of the kooky, if somewhat stereotypically eccentric, Claire, a philanthropist air-hostess, while a host of artfully conceived peripheral characters - the hyperactive child, the failed rock-star, the manic widow (Sarandon) • provide a charming backdrop to a story which, disappointingly, never really seems to decide on where it is going.
At times, it has potential as a moving portrait of bereavement; at others, it comes across as a prod at traditional American values and, at its worst, unfortunately bears more than a passing resemblance to a mobile phone commercial. Multi-faceted and engaging, Elizabethtown clearly has aspirations of greatness but, ultimately, fails to reach its intended destination - instead, it falls flat on its footwear foundations and a rather wet metaphor about salmon. Attractive, but unremarkable.
10th Nov 2005