Elizabethtown DVD > Reviews > Where's My Lost DVD?

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	A Joy To Watch Orlando getting a serious role for acting
Disadvantages:	Kirsten Dunst  -  is she a serial liar?

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Introduction:

Firstly I must explain why my review of Elizabethtown is entitled 'Where's My Lost DVD?'

I am a member of a online DVD rental company, I have a rental list on the said companies website and you can appoint the rentals on your list as:

High Priority or 'Give me this NOW'
Medium Priority or 'I'm not sure about this one but send it me anyway'
Low Priority or 'Don't send me this ever'

So anything you really, really want to see you put on high priority. So far so good, the only trouble is that any series you put on your list like Series One of Lost is multiple discs and so they send them to you separately but in order. So 'Lost' is High Priority they send me the first 4 episodes and then I get this. Elizabethtown. I wanted more Lost and I got this instead. Elizabethtown.

I wanted to seriously slate this movie, because it is not Lost.

A Short Synopsis:

I wasn't entranced when I read the blurb on the rental list website describing the film, it sounded bleak and a bit depressing, and I can just look out at the weather to get that. But it was directed by Cameron Crowe (who also directed Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky)and I have happened to like other films that he has directed and I needed to get my rental list up to 10 so picked this, more on the director's credibility than the film's plot.

Here goes: Drew Baylor's life has just hit rock bottom, he has worked for eight years on a shoe that has had to be recalled, costing the company he worked for a lot of money. This shoe was his life. Things are pretty bleak, then his sister calls and informs him that their father has passed away. Drew is called upon from the family to go to Elizabethtown to bring his father back home, as he had died while on a trip seeing relatives.

Drew flies out and meets Clare, one of the stewardesses on his flight, she helpfully draws him a map and gives him her phone number. Drew arrives in Elizabethtown and ... well he meets relatives, and meets people, and finds hope and life and begins a trip of his own.

My opinion:

As stated earlier, I wanted to slate this film for not being 'Lost', but I can't. It's beautiful, it's life-affirming, it's deep and meaningful, and I watched it, and wanted more, I was entranced, not all the way through, but eventually entranced.

Almost perfect I would say.

First off Orlando Bloom is fantastic in this movie, he started off a bit shaky for me in this, the voice-over was a bit melodramatic, and he seemed to be trying too hard at first in the movie, it seemed a little strained, the despair. But he delivers a fine performance later on, and after that shaky start becomes a joy to watch, and see his character develop, and cope, and not cope, and be someone floundering in a very humane way.

Kirsten Dunst plays the ditsy stewardess, so helpful you could slap her, Clare. And this is why the film is almost perfect, because although I did quite like the character and her acting, it was a little false, too nice, too helpful, too ditsy. She plays the part well, and isn't offensive, and I prefer her slightly shy and not quite sure of herself smile rather than the toothy grin of Keira Knightley in Love, Actually. But was there more to her than just fluff? This is what I am left wondering, but I feel that this is not her movie, it is Orlando's movie, it is his tale, she is part of it but not a huge part of it I thought.

Other smaller parts go to Susan Sarandon as the grieving widow of Mitch and Drew's mother, not a big part for her, but she carries it well and is believable and likable, and not offensive. Alec Baldwin has a minor role as Drew's boss right at the beginning of the film, a very small part for him, and he was as good as he usually is.

The first say half of the film plods along, and I was a little too aware of knowing how long the film had gone on for, you know when you're not really engaged with a movie if you're thinking to yourself, well it's been on for one hour and fourteen minutes, hmmm. I was enjoying the quiet steadyness of it, and sort of wondering where it was going but not avidly. But it is worth sticking with for the last half, if I'm honest I almost gave up on it and thought to myself I could turn this off now and I wouldn't be that bothered, but I stuck with it.

And I was so glad that I did. Because it all comes together, the wonderful scenes near the end of the film are worth waiting for, the huge bird on fire, the people dancing at the memorial, the balcony where Martin Luther King was shot, the Mississippi, the music, the maps, it was worth the wait. It is like a rediscovering of the soul, a growing realisation of life through death, and loss, and finding out who we are. It's beautiful. And there is hope, in the end there is hope, and I felt that it was also about America too, and the nation, the people, the American Dream. About success, failure, fiasco, and realisation of the soul. Not just a love story, as in a romance between two people but a love story of life itself.

I must also mention the music, wonderful, perfect and so consummately arranged within the film, it really enhanced the scenes near the end, and identified with Orlando's grief and hope and loss, and fear and made us a party to it's humanness and reality even more.

The film brings up so many questions about who we are and who we know and what we know about them and what we know about ourselves, and our surroundings, after watching this I walked out down the lane to my post box and I marvelled at the hills with snow on, the sheep in the fields, and the low clouds hanging over the hills, and it made me very happy to be here.

Extra Features On The DVD:

There's a behind the scenes feature that was didn't really interest me much, a couple of extended scenes and theatrical trailers and a photo gallery, all of which didn't impress me that much, I watch a DVD for the film rather than the extras, these were adequate but not really noteworthy I felt.

Availability:

Available in most retailers selling DVD films, on Amazon for £6.97 and probably for sale on Ebay for under £10. And seeing it on Amazon for that price I'm tempted myself.