{"id":8339,"date":"2007-04-19T03:46:44","date_gmt":"2007-04-19T07:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=8339"},"modified":"2015-05-30T02:20:19","modified_gmt":"2015-05-30T06:20:19","slug":"elizabethtown-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/19\/elizabethtown-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabethtown (2005)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I always try to give my favorite directors the benefit of the doubt. Regardless of their work, I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt. What\u2019s so wrong about a dude who met a chick, and the chick helped the dude learn how to live his life, and now the dude has a different outlook on life than the dude before him? Nothing. Nothing! I\u2019ve been that dude, I\u2019ve met that chick, and I say more, Cameron, more, dude! Cameron Crowe is not all about the pimple dick man being helped by a strong woman, it\u2019s a young man learning about life from a special woman. I love that. As for Kirsten Dunst, the melon head is an actress I rather enjoy. In her high points, and utter low points, the woman is easy to look at, and easy to endure.<\/p>\n

With \u201cElizabethtown,\u201d the benefit of the doubt only goes so far. I\u2019m still trying to figure out what the hell was the point to the entire film. We have a jaded young man in the shoe industry, his dad dies before he decides to off himself, then he comes into a small Southern Americana town, and comes across a slew of quirky Southern characters. How utterly original. Some are slack jawed yokels, some wave their American flags, and hell, even our jaded young man Drew has a cousin who loves Lynyrd Skynyrd. Throw in a hoedown and jug, and you have a bonafide clich\u00e9-athon! And the question inevitably trails back to: What is the whole point? I\u2019m still confused on that little specific.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen better slice of life coming of age bullshit from other directors, and \u201cElizabethtown\u201d is not one of those better flicks of the sub-genre. It\u2019s scattered and at most times it feels like two different movies sloppily smashed together. One involves a stupid death plot with Drew trying to decide if he\u2019s sad his father died, and one involves Drew romancing a pretty blonde stalker. Neither of which are even remotely as good as they have the potential to be. Any attempt at character focus that is not on Drew is minimal and utterly paper thin, while Orlando Bloom is stale in this lead role. When he\u2019s supposed to be quirky, he\u2019s wooden, when he\u2019s supposed to be emotional, he\u2019s over the top, and he\u2019s just not as charming as he should be.<\/p>\n

I wish there was someone else in this role. Crowe\u2019s flop is a flop in every sense of the word. The emotions are flat, the delivery utterly trite, and I just didn\u2019t buy anything that went on here. I mean, how is a girl who takes mental pictures by miming a camera endearing? It\u2019s not. Why is going to a Southern town suddenly the path to a refreshed outlook on life? A pretty blonde who wants to bed you, now that will keep you from suicide. Otherwise, it\u2019s sucky, and I\u2019m disappointed. Sentimental, sappy, and sometimes just crappy, \u201cElizabethtown\u201d surpasses any hope of being a surprisingly good film, by giving us a brutally clich\u00e9 plot, bland acting, millions of unresolved sub-plots, and a pointless end result. Though Dunst is a saving grace, it\u2019s an awfully clunky, self-indulgent little heap of garbage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I always try to give my favorite directors the benefit of the doubt. Regardless of their work, I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt. What\u2019s so wrong about a dude who met a chick, and the chick helped the dude learn how to live his life, and now the dude has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302,310,340,874],"class_list":["post-8339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-e","tag-family","tag-romance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15288,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8339\/revisions\/15288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}