♥♥♥♥
+ Best Big Flop Movie of the Year + Best Romance of the Year + Best Feel-Good Movie of the Year + Best Kentucky Movie of the Year
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| This sprawling collage-style poster for Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown shows some of the vivid life and warmth that the film offers |
A young shoe designer, whose project for several years has turned into a giant failure, travels to Kentucky, because his father has passed away there, and on his way he meets a special girl by the name of Claire.
Elizabethtown is written and directed by great Californian filmmaker Cameron Crowe (We Bought a Zoo (2011)), who cements his very particular sensibility here with a romance dramedy that is a bit as Roger Ebert has described it; the ultimate 'meet-cute'.
Both Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)) and Kirsten Dunst (Wag the Dog (1997)) are delightful here, and their characters are unbelievably sweet, cute and as good as flawless. Susan Sarandon (Hell and Back (2015)) is also good in Elizabethtown. Near the end Bloom reminds us that his character is, in fact, suicidal, but this reminder, in the context of the romance and lively characterization so far, is just about impossible to buy.
Real life isn't much like what's presented here in my experience, but I wish it was, and I am happy to dig out my inner sentimental teenage girl to enjoy everything cooked up in Elizabethtown. - Because besides its being too much in some ways, Elizabethtown is also a rarity, (it is devoid of violence, cursing and drugs) a folksy and actually funny film! It also benefits from Crowe's knack for picking good music, deals with death in a fine way and is an all-around lovely and warm time.
Related posts:
Cameron Crowe: 2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
We Bought a Zoo (2011) - Crowe's terrific family film
2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Watch a trailer for the film here
Box office: 52 mil. $
= Big flop
[Elizabethtown premiered 4 September (Venice International Film Festival, Italy) and runs 123 minutes. Jane Fonda was cast in Sarandon's part but dropped out; Ashton Kutcher was cast in Bloom's part but didn't strike up enough chemistry with Dunst and "left the project"; Dunst dropped out of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village to play in Elizabethtown. Shooting took place in Kentucky, including in the real Elizabethtown, Arkansas, Oklahoma, California, Oregon, Nebraska and in Memphis, Tennessee from July 2004 - ?. The film opened #3, behind fellow new release The Fog and hold-over hit Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-rabbit, to a slight 10.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it fell from the top 5 in its second week and grossed 26.8 mil. $ (51.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 4 mil. $ (7.7 %) and the UK with 2.8 mil. $ (5.4 %). The film was nominated for a Grammy. Roger Ebert agreed with Film Excess in giving the film a 3/4 star review. The term 'manic pixie dream girl' was coined by critic Nathan Rabin to describe Dunst's "bubbly, shallow cinematic creature" character in the film. Crowe returned with documentaries The Union (2011) and Pearl Jam Twenty (2011) and fiction feature We Bought a Zoo (2011). Bloom returned in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), and Dunst returned in Marie Antoinette (2006). Elizabethtown is rotten at 29 % with a 4.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Elizabethtown?
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