ELIZABETHTOWN

Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Judy Greer, Jessica Biel

"It is a heck of a place to find yourself"

Alright so let's try to forget the fact that this movie stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst for a few minutes ok? Just focus on the fact that it was written and directed by Cameron Crowe. The director who gave us "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous" yet unfortunately it seems he didn't quite make the cut in this movie. So do we blame the script or do we blame on the actors? I would go out on a limb and say yes the actors didn't do justice to their roles.

The plot though rather long was interesting enough. A young man who just experienced a major setback in his career is about to kill himself (not as morose as it sounds). He receives a phone call from his sister that their father died while visiting his hometown in Kentucky. He is then sent to go bring his father's cremated remains back to Oregon.
So far so good, right? Wait! There is more.
He meets a stewardess during his flight and they end up sharing this platonic relationship. He also begins to find some meaning in his sorry existence of a life. Learn from his failures, as well as reconnect with his deceased father in some way albeit a bit late in the game. That part is when it gets a bit tedious because you have the 'romantic' lead actress spewing some existential lines in her effort to project some positive energy upon his depressing life.

She says:
"Men see things in a box, and women see them in a round room."
"I don't know a lot about everything, but I do know a lot about the part of everything that I know, which is people."
"I want you to get into the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that's happened." Lines which are rather witty enough except they were delivered by Kirsten Dunst and she was talking to Orlando Bloom. Double eeps!
I personally couldn't connect with either of them and kept thinking maybe it would have been more poignant if they cast other actors for these roles.
But all isn't lost, I liked the last part when Drew goes off with the urn containing his father's ashes on a road trip. We are shown glimpses of what each US State he passes by is famous for. Places like Oklahoma (the memorial for the Oklahoma bombing victims), the hotel room where Martin Luther King, Jr. slept before he was assassinated. Important historical places in the USA. For someone like me who has never traveled to the States, it provided some interesting tidbits. I also loved the soundtrack in this movie. But it would have been much better if Cameron Crowe didn't bombard us with songs in every other scene. It worked fine in "Almost Famous" because afterall it was a movie about a band on the road but here it just seemed too much. It might as well have been a long music video of various hits.