Elizabethtown sucked. S and I went to see it last night, and both of us thought it was unsuccessful.
For my part, I was disappointed because even the romantic comedy part of the movie didn't work. I mean, I can watch almost EVERY romantic comedy ever made happily. For example, Maid in Manhattan was by all accounts a terrifyingly bad movie, but I still enjoyed it, especially at the end, when they got together. There's a little upwelling of happiness and rightness that comes with cheesy movies like that. If Elizabethtown had been terrible but cheesy-good, I would have said that it was "cute" and "fulfilling". But no, no, no.
I'm not sure if Crowe was just trying to do too much with this movie, or if it was badly written. (My friend Tim said that he read the script a long time ago, though, and that the script read wonderfully. I said as much to S last night, when I said that I suspected that E-town would make a great novel, because it was so rich with material. So I guess I'm saying that it wasn't badly written.) It wasn't the acting, per se. I'm lukewarm about Orlando, and Kirsten. Both were okay, and it was clear that if anyone could have saved the movie, it was Dunst. But she didn't, unfortunately for the movie. The minor cast of characters was wonderful; one of my favorite little parts of the movie was the interplay between Drew (Orlando Bloom) and his cousin Jesse, and Jesse's son, Samson. It occurs to me now that the whole meaning of this little interplay was some message about fatherhood, being that Drew has just lost his father.
In fact, I feel nothing for Drew's loss, because I don't understand his relationship with his father. There was nothing in this movie to make us care. Seriously. There was only one moment that resonated with me, and I'm almost certain that it's 75% about the music playing during the moment. "Moon River" will do it to me evrey time.
Anyway, this is very, very disappointing, because I was eagerly looking forward to another "Almost Famous". If Crowe had succeeded, this movie would have been RIDICULOUSLY good. (Like one reviewer said, same story as "Garden State", kinda, but where he said that it was good where GS was bad, I'll have to disagree with him. GS worked far better than this movie did.)
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