Elizabethtown DVD > Reviews > Get Out of Town

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?	Unmemorable

Advantages:	Nice ideas
Disadvantages:	Serious miscasting, patchy direction and a lack of focus

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Drew Baylor's life isn't going to plan; his latest sports shoe design is so bad that it's just cost his company millions of dollars. As a result he's lost his job and his girlfriend and just as he's about to commit suicide, his sister calls and tells him his father has died. So it's up to him to go to his dad's hometown of Elizabethtown, Kentucky to arrange the funeral. On the way he meets a quirky airhostess, who makes him see that life may be worth living after all.

I generally like Cameron Crowe's output; he's great at creating engaging heroes with complex lives but simple needs (to love and be loved). However, his latest effort is rather a disappointment. Written in the aftermath of his own father's death, it suffers from self-indulgence. It's a messy mish-mash of ideas and characters that lacks focus. It can't decide what sort of film it is for a start; part romantic comedy, part coming-of-age dramedy (that's drama with a hint of comedy) it finishes with a superfluous half-hour of finding-yourself road movie. The problem is that the scope of the film is simultaneously too broad and too narrow. The sprawling narrative with its multiplicity of plotlines and character arcs is distracting and undermines the central character's journey. However it is difficult to engage with the main protagonist because he lacks direction. It feels as though the story would have been better served if it had a Robert Altman-style multi-perspective structure to it. Much like the key scrapbook motif it feels as though too many disparate people and incidents are bundled together in nonsensical fashion.

I imagine it feels like a very personal project for the writer-director, but because he is so close to his project it lacks perspective. This impacts on his directorial style, robbing the film of much of the vim and verve that has characterised his earlier oeuvre. He gives too much significance and screen-time to relatively minor incidents that would have been all the funnier or more poignant had they been shorter. A case in point is the hillbilly wedding. It's little more than a plot device to bring the two leads together, but it drags on way too long. All it would take would be a firmer hand in the editing suite and the odd montage to accomplish. The whole road movie section of the film feels tacked-on because by that point Drew has more or less found himself and it smacks of navel-gazing. This makes the movie drag and it certainly feels two hours long. There are also too many quirky characters that make Drew look flat and dull by comparison. The introduction of his strange extended family is problematic. There are too many of them to devote sufficient time to each one and focussing solely on Drew's hippy cousin does little other than underline the central theme of problematic father-son relationships. The dialogue is often too considered to feel spontaneous; everything has a tendency to take on an unwarranted significance. That is not to say there aren't some witty moments ("The sound of sh*t hitting the fan"). It's just that they are sprinkled too sparsely throughout the gargantuan running time.

Now don't get me wrong, I wouldn't kick Orlando Bloom out of bed for eating crisps, but his career has been a crushing disappointment. After "Lord of the Rings", every film seems only to have proved his shortcomings. He's a good-looking boy but not a good enough actor to carry a film. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he can't act. He is incapable of showing extremes of emotion, lacks timing on a grand scale and has zero chemistry or sexual tension with his female co-star. He can't even manage a convincing American accent. He's simply too bland to convince as the suicidal Drew. It's impossible to imagine that he is able to feel anything strongly enough to make him want to take his own life.

Kirsten Dunst is a one of few young actresses in recent times to have successfully made the transition form child star to grown-up actor. I like her because she makes unusual choices and is able play a multiplicity of roles. She is a sparky and entirely engaging choice to play the kooky Claire. She has a light touch that works well with the chatty busybody persona the part requires. It's easy to see how men would be attracted to her; she is pretty (but not overwhelmingly beautiful), funny, romantic and odd enough to be quirky but not disturbing. However, it is a thankless task in the face of such underwhelming indifference from her male counterpart. Though Dunst is trying her hardest to engage Bloom, his lukewarm reception undermines all her hard work.

Alec Baldwin is cornering the market in high quality supporting roles these days. Not bad for a man with such a chequered career. As Drew's boss he is allowed to indulge his comic timing. It's a nicely observed turn in which he comes across as a quixotic self-made man in the mould of Richard Branson. Impassive one minute and warm the next, it's a whimsical performance that relies heavily on the twinkle in Baldwin's baby blues, but he has developed enough charm to carry it off.

Susan Sarandon is disappointing in a monotone performance that begins manic and continues in the same vein without ever pausing for breath as Drew's mother. Judy Greer is similarly afflicted in her role as his panicking sister. There's just nowhere for the characters to go and they feel like different facets of the same personality.

Like most of Crowe's output, the soundtrack feels like a grab bag of 1970s' jukebox classics. Admittedly the scope is rather wider than in previous movies, encompassing music from the 1960s to today. There's an eclectic mix of styles from Motown ("Can't Hurry Love"), early Elton John ("My Father's Gun" and "Tiny Dancer"), eighties' classics like "Pride: In the Name of Love". The problem is that his use of them is becoming self-referential as he uses tracks like "Tiny Dancer" that have appeared on previous outings. I swear he's solely responsible for keeping Tom Petty's record sales on an even keel; I can't think of single one of his films that doesn't feature him in some form. Here it's "Learning to Fly" that keeps the royalties rolling in. The incidental music includes plenty of jangly guitars and bluesy backgrounds.

"Elizabethtown" is a frustrating non-starter from one of the kings of feel-good. It is patchy and overlong but has occasional flashes of inspiration. It can be funny and touching but also incredibly trite. However, when played out by an actor without the experience or expressivity to convince as a suicidal man needing to be saved, there is little that can redeem the film. One of the most irritating facets if the movie is its inability to end at an appropriate juncture, merrily tootling along for a good half-an-hour after its natural lifespan has been exceeded. All the sharp observations in the world can't cover the fact that this is too deeply personal a project for Crowe to be objective about. It wallows in self-indulgence throughout; sacrificing narrative clarity for a jumble of anecdotes that leave nothing more than a bundle of loose ends come the finale. The really annoying thing is that you can see the potential that he consistently fails to grasp. A missed opportunity.