Elizabethtown (2005) Directed by Cameron Crowe. Stars Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Bruce McGill, Jessica Biel, Judy Greer, Paul Schneider, Loudon Wainwright III, and Alec Baldwin
Five words or less review: Brilliant. Transcendent. Touching. Beautiful. Real.*
*Don’t know what the critics were thinking on this one. The film was marketed poorly, and the reviews were mixed at best, but for my money, I think this may be Crowe’s finest work. It certainly is Bloom’s—and Kirsten Dunst is an absolute revelation.
Maybe you just kinda have to be in the mood.
I saw the first screening of this in Phoenix about four or five months before the movie came out. And let me tell you, it hit like a ton of bricks. A badly written, pretentious, cut-the-last-twenty-minutes ton of bricks. Sorry, it was a bad movie.
Don’t be sorry. You are entitled to your opinion, wrong though it may be.
I have no idea what was “pretentious” about it, either—but then, I tend not to recognize pretentious, and in fact am often included among pretentiousness’ posse.
As for the writing, I thought that quite well done (this has always been Crowe’s strength). And I thought the chemistry between the leads was unmistakable.
This was a far cry from the typical romantic comedy, certainly. But “bad movie”? I dunno. I watch a movie just about every night, and this one —along with Harry and Tonto —have really stood out among my recent viewings.
My own review in five words or less: De gustibus non est disputandum.
You do know I love you, though…
Some of my best friends loved Elizabethtown.
I haven’t seen it, but one friend was telling me just two days ago how much she and her husband loved it. So you aren’t alone.
Hmm. Jeff loves it. Others hate it.
“Controversial”
Kirsten Dunst is an absolute revelation
FFN?
feed the need, baby, feed.the.need
Mmmm, it was a good movie–except that there were three montages in it. That was a bit of overkill.
I seem to be disagreeing with the (leftist) critics more and more, so I will definitely see this now.
I live in a (smaller) town just a couple of minutes from Elizabethtown. E-town has a population of about 25,000 people. It’s only 1/2 hour from Louisville. The small-town-ishness portrayed in the film rang a little hollow, for me.
Also, to get to E-town from the Airport, just go south on Interstate 65. Look for the big green sign that says “Elizabethtown”.
Other than that, I kinda liked it. I was hammered, though.
The wife and I have been meaning to give Elizabethtown a look. Me, because I’ve enjoyed most of Cameron Crowe’s work, and the wife because the Food Network’s Paula Deen is in it, and she loves Paula.
Which, this may be a little off topic, but we had Paula Deen’s sloppy joe recipe tonight, and it was pretty good. All it is is ground beef, onion soup mix, and just a little flour to thicken, then you serve it on plain white bread with mustard and a slice of red onion.
Yummy Southern comfort food. Made me miss Mississippi a little.
I haven’t seen the movie myself, and just wanted to jump in and ask Jeff to close the font size on this post so the rest of the page doesn’t go to 6 point too. FYI, the same thing happened to the previous review too.
And just so I’m not completely off-topic, here’s another perspective that gave me a chuckle on Kirsten Dunst.
I was going to say you’re probably right, because he’s been coasting on the common misattribution of Fast Times to him for two decades. But then I realized Singles was the only thing I could remember him directingâ€â€easily the worst movie I’ve ever seen (not hyperbole)â€â€so I had to check the record books:
Vanilla Skyâ€â€half cool, half travesty; every change from the original was for the far worse; saw it on TV not knowing who made it until the drool-drowned ending, and guessed correctly (2nd try)
Almost Famousâ€â€saw his name on it and dodged it; this must be the good one
Jerry Maguireâ€â€lifetime disqualification from consideration as art for making pantyliner like this; again, didn’t know it was him, saw it, died inside, looked for someone to blame and wasn’t surprised
Say Anythingâ€â€pseudo-cool cheese-o-rama with the evil side effect of convincing Peter Gabriel to devote himself almost exclusively to AOR schmaltz, robbing the world of two decades of great music (so far)
So yeah.
I was going to say you’re probably right.
Unless Elizabethtown is actually Singles running under a new title, I can’t imagine you’re not.
But sweet Jesusâ€â€there’s a girl getting The Romantic Comedy Sunny Day Piggyback Ride Of Love And Joy And Summer on the poster. That’s so cliche you can’t even use it in a parody. ARGH!!!!!
tw sales: Nope, he’s running on 80% failure there, too. So his getting paid to make movies must be some kind of money-laundering scheme.
I had to 30x FF through Susan Sarandon tap dancing. I really can’t stand that skank.
TW: I could do without her
Joe Ego —
The tag has been closed. What browser are you using?
And BoZ—well, Crowe did write Fast Times (a GREAT Amy Heckerling movie); and Say Anything was quite big there in the late 80s.
Singles has it’s moments—love Sedgwick, and Matt Dillon’s grunge schtick is pretty good—but it was Almost Famous that earned Crowe his critical plaudits (with an Oscar nom for Goldie Hawn’s kid); and they were well-deserved: the story, which is based loosely on Crowe’s life as a teen writing for Rolling Stone is definitely worth checking out. Vanilla Sky, too, is a pretty good adaptation, but not nearly as good as the original, true.
Maybe I’ll watch it if someone else buys the DVD. I’m not giving Susan Sarandon one red cent of my money. Just the way it is.
Yet another fugly perspective on Kirsten that is so true, true, true….
http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/go_fug_yourself/kirsten_dunst/index.html
Read here for the biggest defeat of all for socialism, and the biggest event of the last 15 years.
Vanilla Sky disappointed me in the end, but most of the movie was actually pretty good. Aside from that, I’ve always loved Crowe. Say Anything was gorgeous, “Goldie Hawn’s kid” will probably never be better (or more amazingly beautiful) than she was in Almost Famous, I actually liked Singles (although it looks so dated now), and I liked Jerry Maguire, too. So, count me as a fan.
But I skipped Elizabethtown this weekend precisely because the horrible reviews scared me off (and Kirsten Dunst is a bit of a mixed bag to me: always beautiful, but she seems to sleepwalk through some of her movies). Since you’re a fan of Crowe’s, I’ll give it a shot.
OT, but have any of y’all checked out the the HuffPost lately? The descent into paranoia continues.
<a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/president-bush-forever_b_15375.html” target=”_blank”>
zOMG, Bushitler is going to be PReSIdnt 4EVER!!! Maybe he’ll die!!11!!!!
This sort of thing makes me weep for the future of our 2 Party System. You can’t have one when one of the parties is being run by the insane.
Jeff- please don’t ban me for going off topic once again, but someone please:
tell me, what was she doing carrying the flag at the Olympics? I mean, here’s Yoko Ono reading 2 sentences of (still) broken English, Peter Gabriel on a stage after the parade of nations singing, “imagine there’s no countries”, and then Susan Sarandon? Can someone explain that to me?
Whatever Elizabethtown is, it has to be better than that.
I’ll have to check this movie out. I think Vanilla Sky was perhaps the most underrated film of the last ten years; it had about a 33% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I thought it was absolutely brilliant.
Loved the Spanish original, too.
I saw Elizabeth town on a plane flight recently. Only, I hadn’t seen fit to buy headphones, and I was reading Hemmingway’s A Farewell to Arms as the movie played, so I witnessed the entire thing in 15 second snips once every 5 or 6 minutes.
My five word review of Elizabeth town as seen in 15 second chunks every 5 or 6 minutes without volume while reading Hemmingway: Dunst is cute; Hemmingway depressing.
My 5 word reviews:
1) What the f*ck was that?
2) You call that an ending?
If it isn’t centered around the closing of that do-nut shop on the interstate that made the trip to Louisville more pleasant, it doesn’t capture the pathos of E-Town and I won’t pay to see it!
Plus Susan Sarandon hasn’t done anything decent since “Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
Did they keep the part with the whistling shoes that was the culmination of the masturbatory “Let’s see what’s on Cameron Crowe’s iPod” POS ending? Gyah. That’s what the screening audience hated the MOST. Well, and the fact that the scene went on longer than the ending of Return of the King. Did you say this was Orlando Bloom’s best role? The guy had NO screen presence and couldn’t settle on an accent. It’s kind of sad that my date and I were both crossing our fingers during the Suicide Death Bike, and that was only about 15 minutes into the film.
Kristen Dunst cute? If you’re into the crazy type…seriously…her character was bat-shit insane.
The Susan Sarandon stand-up act was god-awful.
Alec Baldwin was funny, I’ll grant you that. But if you can’t see that the Freebird scene was so mindlessly self-indulgent and the kind of thing a director thinks is clever when it so obviously isn’t, then I honestly can’t see where you’re coming from!
I don’t know what was cut out from the screening and the release several months later, but the damn thing was awful, and scored terribly, that’s all I can say.
– Movie review in one word or less –
Elizabethtown: “……”
TW: “…Shooting was halted, while the movie crew spent the better part of the day looking for the corps of Susans acting career…”
Kirsten Dunst—As my Uncle Earl used to say, “I’d eat the peanuts outta her shit.”
IE6 on Windows 2000. Don’t beat on me, it’s work issued! I haven’t had a chance to see how Safari displays @ home.
Many critics wrote their reviews based on the cut screened at the Toronto Film Festival, a longer and generally considered worse version than what came out in theaters and on DVD. I haven’t seen the movie, but this seems to have been the cause of many people liking it more than they thought they would based on the critical consensus.
I had the exact same reaction to the film the first time I saw it, Jeff.
I just bought the DVD and watched it again yesterday. Just as good.
When I describe it to people, I say, “It’s… a Cameron Crowe film. If you don’t like his movies, you won’t like this one.”
Not as good as “Almost Famous,” but pretty close.
I fully expected the five-word review to be:
False advertising. Shannon’s nipples non-existent.
I was scared too, but now that Jeff has given it the endorsement, I’ll go rent the DVD.
Cameron Crowe does a better job of incorporating music into his films than anyone else.
There was no whistling shoe, and I suspect the final cut looked a lot different than the cut many of you saw earlier.
But who knows. Decide for yourself.
Jeff,
My criteria for determining whether to follow someone’s movie recommendations is to ask their opinions of I Heart Huckabees and Lost in Translation.
“Cameron Crowe does a better job of incorporating music into his films than anyone else.”
I will never, ever again hear “Good Vibrations” without picturing Tom Cruise on the elevator in that pivotal moment in Vanilla Sky.
Ah, ok, yeah, in the first cut, at the end of Orlando Bloom’s trip, it turned out that while he was finding himself, some mallrat discovered that if you cut the fins of the shoe a certain way, it made a whistling sound when you walked, and all of the sudden people were ordering and buying and cutting the show so it was now a huge success. Weird stuff.
I know, Patterico. What about the very beginning as Cruise awakes with Radiohead’s “Everything in its right place” buzzing around?” Or the tour bus singalong in “Almost Famous”? I had totally forgotten about Queen Elton.