Originally released October 14, 2005:

Cameron Crowe is a filmmaker I generally admire. He makes highly enjoyable fables about love conquering all, grand romantic gestures, and finding your voice. His track record speaks for itself: Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous (I forgive him the slipshod remake of Vanilla Sky, though it did have great artistry and a bitchin’ soundtrack). Crowe is a writer that can zero in on character with the precision of a surgeon. He’s a man that can turn simple formula (boy meets girl) and spin mountains of gold. With these possibly unfair expectations, I saw Elizabethtown while visiting my fiancé in New Haven, Connecticut. We made a mad dash to the theater to be there on time, which involved me ordering tickets over my cell phone. I was eager to see what Crowe had in store but was vastly disappointed with what Elizabethtown had to teach me.

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) opens the film by narrating the difference between a failure and a fiasco. Unfortunately for him, he’s in the corporate cross-hairs for the latter. Drew is responsible for designing a shoe whose recall will cost his company an astounding “billion with a B” dollars (some research of an earlier cut of the film says the shoe whistled while you ran). His boss (Alec Baldwin) takes Drew aside to allow him to comprehend the force of such a loss. Drew returns to his apartment fully prepared to engineer his own suicide machine, which naturally falls apart in a great comedic beat. Interrupting his plans to follow career suicide with personal suicide is a phone call from his sister (Judy Greer). Turns out Drew’s father has died on a trip visiting family in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Drew is sent on a mission from his mother (Susan Sarandon) to retrieve his father and impart the family’s wishes. On the flight to Kentucky, Drew gets his brain picked by Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a cheery flight attendant. While Drew is surrounded by his extended family and their down homsey charm and eccentricities, he seeks out some form of release and calls Claire. They talk for hours upon hours and form a fast friendship and stand on the cusp of maybe something special.

I think the most disappointing aspect of Elizabethtown for me is how it doesn’t have enough depth to it. Crowe definitely wears his heart on his sleeve but has never been clumsy about it. Elizabethtown wants to be folksy and cute and impart great lessons about love, life, and death. You can’t reach that plateau when you have characters walking around stating their inner feelings all the time, like Drew and Claire do. They might as well be wearing T-shirts that explain any intended subtext. Crowe squanders his film’s potential by stuffing too many storylines into one pot, thus leaving very little attachment to any character. Elizabethtown has some entertaining details, chiefly Chuck and Cindy’s drunk-on-love wedding, but the film as a whole feels too loose and disconnected to hit any emotional highs. If you want a better movie about self-reawakening, rent Garden State. If you want a better movie about dealing with loss, rent Moonlight Mile.

This is Bloom’s first test of acting that doesn’t involve a faux British accent and some kind of heavy weaponry. The results are not promising. Bloom is a pin-up come to life like a female version of Weird Science, a living mannequin, possibly an alien with great skin, but he isn’t a real compelling actor. He has about two emotions in his repertoire. His whiny American-ized accent seems to be playing a game of tag. He’s not a bad actor per se; he just gets the job done without leaving any sort of impression. To paraphrase Claire, he’s a “substitute leading man.”

Dunst is chirpy, kooky and cute-as-a-button but is better in small doses. Her accent is much more convincing than Bloom’s. Sarandon deserves pity for being involved in Elizabethtown‘s most improbable, cringe-worthy moment. At her husband’s wake, she turns her time of reflection into a talent show with a stand-up routine and then a horrifying tap dance. Apparently this gesture wins over the extended family who has hated her for decades. Greer (The Village) is utterly wasted in a role that approximates a cameo. Without a doubt, the funniest and most memorable performance is delivered by Baldwin, who perfectly mixes menace and amusement. He takes Drew on a tour of some of the consequences of the loss of a billion dollars, including the inevitable closing of his Wildlife Watchdog group. “We could have saved the planet,” Baldwin says in the most comically dry fashion. Baldwin nails the balance between discomfort and bewilderment.

Elizabethtown wants to be another of Crowe’s smart, feel-good sentimental field trips, but it falls well short. I was dumbfounded to see how little the story progressed. It lays the groundwork for a menagerie of subplots and then, in a rush to finish, caps everyone off with some emotionally unearned payoff. To put it simply, Elizabethtown wants credit and refuses to show its work. The film is packed with characters and ideas before succumbing into an interminable travelogue of America in its closing act, but what cripples Crowe’s film about opening up to emotional growth is that the movie itself doesn’t showcase growth. We see the rough and tumble beginnings of everyone, we see the hugs-all-around end, but we don’t witness that most critical movement that takes the audience from Point A to Point B. The results are beguiling and quite frustrating. Take the subplot about Drew’s cousin, who can?t connect to his father either and wants to be friends to his own son, a shrill little terror, instead of a father. Like most of Elizabethtown‘s storylines, these subplots die of neglect until a half-hearted nod to wrap everything up. Father sees son perform and all is well. Son does little to discipline child but all is well. Elizabethtown is sadly awash in undeveloped storylines and characters and unjustified emotions, and when they’re unjustified we go from sentiment (warm and fuzzy) to schmaltz (eye-rolling and false). I truly thought Crowe would know better than this.

Crowe has always been the defacto master of marrying music to film. Does anyone ever remember people singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” before its virtuoso appearance in 2000’s Almost Famous? Crowe has a nimble ear but his penchant for emotional catharsis set to song gets the better of him with Elizabethtown. There’s just way too many musical montages (10? 15?) covering the emotional ground caused by the script’s massive shortcomings. By the time a montage is followed by another montage, you may start growing an unhealthy ire for acoustic guitar. Because there are so many unproductive musical numbers and montages, especially when we hit the last formless act, Elizabethtown feels like Crowe is shooting the soundtrack instead of a story.

Elizabethtown is an under-cooked, unfocused travelogue set to music. Crowe intends his personal venture to belt one from the heart, but like most personal ventures the significance can rarely translate to a third party. It’s too personal a film to leave any lasting power, like a friend narrating his vacation slide show. Elizabethtown is gestating with plot lines that it can’t devote time to, even time to merely show the progression of relationships. The overload of musical montages makes the movie feels like the longest most somber music video ever. Bloom’s limited acting isn’t doing anyone any favors either. In the end, it all rings too phony and becomes too meandering to be entertaining. Elizabethtown is a journey the film won’t even let you ride along for. This movie isn’t an outright fiasco but given Crowe’s remarkable track record it can’t help but be anything but a failure.

Nate’s Grade: C

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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER

I truly hope some day Cameron Crowe reads this. I owe him an apology.

I’ve always considered Elizabethtown the turning point in Crowe’s career, where things took an errant path that he’s been stuck on ever since, though there were certain warning signs with 2001’s Vanilla Sky. I was disappointed by this movie and the ensuing twenty years have only made me think back less favorably, since this was the juncture where Crowe’s hit-making streak of such tender, personal, and tremendously entertaining studio dramedies came to an end, where the Crowe projects afterwards felt more like Crowe was chasing after the idea of what makes a Cameron Crowe movie and losing his sense of self. I selected Elizabethtown for my 2025 re-watch mostly because I’ve never gone back to it in the proceeding two decades but also because it’s an important switch point in a popular artist’s career. What I wasn’t expecting when I re-watched the movie was to be so taken in by it considering my own personal circumstances.

This is a movie about grief, about putting one foot in front of the other, about coming to terms with mistakes and regrets, and ultimately looking ahead. It’s still a little corny, and it’s still got some flaws, but in 2025, having lost my own father not even a year ago as of this writing, Elizabethtown hit me square in the chest. It made me a mess of emotions and I could plug myself into this bittersweet yet gentle nudge of a film. Even the amiable tone and gentle, searching nature worked for me, as it felt like it was expertly channeling the fog of grief upon experiencing significant loss. Your body is sort of operating on autopilot and you feel outside yourself, like you’re watching a documentary about your life. You feel numb and recognize you’re in pain but you never really want to talk about it yet you crave human connectivity, and even when people awkwardly ask the question, “Are you doing okay?”, while the answer is obvious to all parties, you’re still unexpressively grateful for someone else granting the kindness of reaching out. This movie encapsulates this drifting feeling of loss and shock better than any I can recall. And in Crowe’s universe, which is like a more filled-in and colorful version of our own, strangers will take a moment to recognize your emotional pain and give you a hug. It’s a universe that cares about you, where even a guy getting married in your same hotel wants to invite you to his reception. There are no cynics in a Cameron Crowe universe, or at least if there are, they will be converted by the end like a Charles Dickens tale. It is a universe supremely about feeling and connectivity, and that’s what Drew (Orlando Bloom) has to learn.

Drew is under personal and professional crises. He’s been cast off at his job as an athletic shoe designer because his big design was recalled to the cost of a billion dollars. He says he’s begun cataloging “last looks” by co-workers, when people think this will be the last time they see him again. It’s a nice detail that comes back but also gets us thinking about the later drama with life and death, how every one of us will give our last looks to the people in our lives, we just won’t have the same sense of clarity. Drew is traveling to Kentucky to retrieve his father’s body and return home to his immediate family. This is intended to be a pit stop, a brief sojourn with extended family he doesn’t really see often, a respite before he gets his life back together. These significant loops in life become a natural reflective point, and that’s where Drew is coming from. His life has seemingly bottomed out, and the movie functions as his therapy session to process his grief and his shattered self-image. His sister, an undervalued Judy Greer, keeps asking if he’s had his “big cry” yet, and reminds him that it’s coming. By the end of the movie, it’s not Drew having come full-circle and found his way out of his grief fog. The whole movie is about just setting him up to actually address the loss and feel the completeness of his sadness. Under this perspective, the movie’s many menial supporting characters that dot the plot feel like gentle well-wishers. I complained about them in 2005 but in 2025 it makes the entire world feel like therapy accessories.

Much of the movie is also pinned on the romance between Drew and quirky flight attendant Claire (Kirsten Dunst), and it was her performance that coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG). She can definitely fit that mold but there’s a more subtle sadness to her that you see along the edges, like she’s putting so much effort into maintaining this front in public lest the mask drop and she has to deal properly with her own loneliness and disappointments. I think a more accurate depiction of the MPDG trope as a transparent sop to male fantasy is 2004’s Garden State with Natalie Portman’s spunky character. There is a sense that Claire’s off-screen long-distance bad boyfriend, Ben, is actually made up, an excuse to stop her from getting too close. She uses the term “tourist” to describe herself and Drew, and it’s fitting. The reality of her job makes her feel like she’s constantly in motion without setting down roots, prone to a thousand superficial human interactions that get washed from her memory as the day resets. It’s a transitory life and it can make a person feel outside of themself, questioning which version is their true self. The romantic dance between Claire and Drew really is all about both of them working up the nerve. It’s less a relationship that is fully formed and banging the drum of love; it’s far more an infatuation, where each side is circling over whether to risk the fun for something more. Under that guise, I’m more forgiving of the movie not exactly “showing its work” as I criticized in my original review. It’s not there because they aren’t there. This isn’t a relationship but a flirtation and friendship coalescing. It’s sweet and pleasant, like much of the movie, falling right in line with Crowe’s compassionate, humanist vibes.

It’s hard to exactly quantify but Elizabethtown is more of its moments and the gradual pull that is tugging Drew toward his ultimate destiny, which amounts to self-acceptance and fully processing his grief. I originally castigated Drew’s mother (Susan Sarandon) trying out new hobbies as a means of busying herself in the wake of her husband’s demise, including turning the wake into a standup comedy audition. The jokes themselves can be a little cringey or in poor taste for a funeral, but the overall effort is about this woman trying to define her life now that her partner, the old sturdy definition, has departed. I see something similar with my own mother in the wake of my father’s death. I’m not expecting my mother to start making boner jokes like Sarandon, but I see how this identity crisis can become all-too familiar. I love the absolute chaos of the actual wake that erupts into a literal flaming bird while the family band jams out to Lyndard Skynard’s “Free Bird,” and as that famous guitar solo hits the stratosphere, the movie’s built-up pressure all seems to come to a head, and the continued playing of the song despite all the chaos is its own defiant act of catharsis. It unbounded something inside me as it does for the characters. Then there’s the extended conclusion where Drew drives all over with his father’s ashes and with Claire’s travel guide, notes, and curated soundtrack as companion. It’s a lot, but it’s also the final stretch that gets Drew to finally accept his feelings, to finally feel the totality of loss but also that totality of love, and while his father may be gone, that does not eliminate the lessons and love and memories that live within him. Having this personal deeper dive happen on a father-son road trip actually feels rather fitting and poignant even.

This is the third Cameron Crowe movie I’ve re-examined for my twenty-year re-reviews and it’s also my last. I never formally reviewed any of Crowe’s follow-up movies after 2005. I’ve already talked about how his career has taken a different track in other re-reviews, but I’ve come around on Elizabethtown, and that makes me wonder if maybe I’ll be more charitable to We Bought a Zoo or Aloha in time as well. In 2005, I found Elizabethtown to be a disappointing grab bag of Crowe’s touchy-feely familiarity, and now twenty years later, the movie really gelled for me. Perhaps I needed to go through a similar experience as the protagonist to be more open to its charms and artistic waves, or perhaps I’m getting nostalgic for Crowe’s kind of big-hearted romantic storytelling that hasn’t exactly been proliferating cinemas for some time. Perhaps I’ll watch Elizabethtown again years later and feel completely different, but I kind of doubt it, because now this movie is linked with my own reconciliation of grief after my father’s passing. It’s now been elevated from a disappointment from a revered filmmaker to something personal and passingly profound. It exemplified the foggy feelings and desire for connection for me post-funeral. As Claire says, “We are intrepid. We carry on.” Responding to failures and regrets should continue to resonate, and so Elizabethtown might actually become a personal movie I cherish over the years. It’s not the masterpiece that Almost Famous is, an all-timer, but hardly any other movies will rise to that level. I’ll accept Elizabethtown on its own terms in 2025, and those were the exact terms I needed to feel more whole.

So thank you Cameron Crowe. It took twenty years but I’ve come around. This isn’t a folly, a failure, and certainly no fiasco. It’s actually a sweet and moving tale about trying to find your direction in the face of grief and shame and just finding your way out the other side of the fog. For me, this whole movie was about the universe working through a million cheerful helpers to nudge Drew back onto his feet, including our love interest, which seems less damnable if the entire movie is achieving the same results. For a person looking through tragedy and asking why, it’s just enough encouragement, wisdom, and empathy to feel nourishing without feeling overwhelming, and it doesn’t feel phony at all to me in 2025.

Elizabethtown was what I needed. I love you dad and miss you every day.

Re-View Review: B+