Elizabethtown - 2004 - Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe is capable of making amazing movies, Say Anything and Amost Famous, and they are all structured around the soundtrack. Elizabethtown has all of the hallmarks of Crowe's really good work, but in this case the whole is less than the some of it's parts. Even a good soundtrack feels wasted in this film due to a lack of anything for it to tie together.

Orlando Bloom plays Drew Baylor, a shoe designer that works at Mercury(or Nike). His latest design, eight years in the making, is a complete disaster. After being fired Drew decides to kill himself, but before he can finish the job he gets a call from his sister and she tells him that his dad has died. Drew is nominated to handle everything, so he packs and hops a plane to Kentucky. On the flight he meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a flight attendant, and they have a one-sided conversation. Later while he is sitting around board in his hotel room Drew calls Claire and they talk all night. The two of them meet in person, everything goes great, then Claire leaves but get back in time for the memorial services where she give a special map and soundtrack for his road trip home from Elizabethtown to Oregon. On the trip, Drew spreads his father's ashes a little at a time. We do not follow Drew all the way home due to bit of a detour at the end.

Susan Sarandon is fantastic in a small role, but Bloom feels out of place. Dunst and Bloom have some chemistry, but it comes off forced. Pacing issues plagued this film and by the time the big road trip came around, I didn't really care how it ended.
6/10