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Review:
 Sometimes
discussing a film with colleagues after seeing it isn't that great
an idea. You can like something and they might hate it and that
can, retroactively diminish the enjoyment of it.
In “Elizabethtown” the sum of the parts are far greater than the
whole. We've got some of the best performances of the year and
some great direction servicing an at best mediocre script. The
cast wrestles that sucker to the ground and if you don't mind the
plot-holes, you can have a generally wonderful experience.
Drew Baylor(Orlando Bloom) designs shoes for a major company and
when we first meet him, he's just produced a disaster. Everybody
in the company knows this and he's going to get his head handed to
him by the president of the company(Alec Baldwin).
Baldwin is great. His part isn't that big, but watching him and
Bloom interact is a joy. Drew is has just constructed a perfect
suicide machine and is about to use it when he gets a phone call
from his mother(Susan Sarandon). His father had just died while
visiting his relations in Kentucky, and he has to go back east to
pick up the body and figure out what to do with the body.
So on the way over there, as the only person in coach, he meets an
airline stewardess named Claire(Kirsten Dunst), who is almost too
damn perky for her own good. She bends his ear for most of the
trip. So far so good.
Once we get there we discover that apparently everyone back in
Elizabethtown, KY loved Drew's dad. The relatives arrive by the
dozen, and their all quirky from the grandma's generation to the
little kids. Understandably, Drew decides to bed down in
Louisville.
There's the problems with Drew's Mom and sister Heather(Judy
Greer) back home, the picturesque relations in Elizabethtown, the
gratuitous wedding party in Louisville and the budding romance
with Claire. This is a failed epic, and as was said before, the
parts are far greater than the whole. This doesn't mean that it's
not worth watching. The parts are both funny and moving, there's
just too much of them. The version shown here in Toronto wasn't
exactly finished, and if this film comes out at an hour and forty
minutes, it should be a work of sheer genius. Unfortunately, this
version's over two hours long, can't win 'em all.
Eric Lurio
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