2-hour music video Elizabethtown sucks
Elizabethtown sucked. I should stop writing there because in the end that's all that really matters, but I feel so strongly about this movie's crappiness that it deserves further explanation.
There was so much hope for Cameron Crowe. With his touching coming of age tale Almost Famous in 2000, which was a semi-autobiographical tribute to his younger days as a Rolling Stone writer covering the Allman Brothers Band. The movie has become a cult classic not only because of the perfectly selected soundtrack, but because it reverts back to a time when music was music and not, like Elizabethtown, crap.
Speaking of cult classic, the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High was adapted from a book that Crowe wrote. He actually went back to high school —posing as a student - to research the dialogue and issues revolving teens in the early ‘80's. Fast Times will go into the vault as one of the most honest and hilarious depictions of high school life, which is still amazingly relevant 23 years later.
He also wrote and directed Say Anything (1989), Singles (1992), Jerry McGuire (1996) and Vanilla Sky (2001).
All of Crowe's movies, and Elizabethtown is no exception, have great soundtracks. One of the problems with the film is that Crowe uses the music as a crutch and instead of ending a scene, or the entire movie for that matter, he presses play to a sentimental Elton John song and hopes the audience grasps some sort of closure.
The failure of Elizabethtown can't solely be blamed on Crowe and his lack of direction and shoddy writing. When you combine Crowe's awful dialogue with Orlando Bloom's lack of skill in the acting department, you get one huge mess with only the annoying Kirsten Dunst left to clean it up.
I can't really get into the plot of the movie because I'm not sure what it was actually about. From the trailer you would think Elizabethtown is about a cute boy who meets a quirky airline stewardess. Wrong. Although this happens during the film, there is another two plus hours dedicated to the confusing storyline of Bloom's character going back to his recently deceased father's hometown to bring the body to the family in California; or is it Oregon? The film never really cleared that up.
Parts of the movie had promise, but it is as if Crowe took a bunch of thoughts, stuck them in a hat and randomly drew out which one to edit in next. Don't even ask about the timeline of the movie because I'm still trying to figure out if the movie took place over four days, four weeks or four months.
Like Almost Famous, Elizabethtown is a semi-autobiographical recollection of Crowe's experience of losing his father in the late 80's. If I were Crowe's father I would have asked for my money back.
There was so much hope for Cameron Crowe. With his touching coming of age tale Almost Famous in 2000, which was a semi-autobiographical tribute to his younger days as a Rolling Stone writer covering the Allman Brothers Band. The movie has become a cult classic not only because of the perfectly selected soundtrack, but because it reverts back to a time when music was music and not, like Elizabethtown, crap.
Speaking of cult classic, the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High was adapted from a book that Crowe wrote. He actually went back to high school —posing as a student - to research the dialogue and issues revolving teens in the early ‘80's. Fast Times will go into the vault as one of the most honest and hilarious depictions of high school life, which is still amazingly relevant 23 years later.
He also wrote and directed Say Anything (1989), Singles (1992), Jerry McGuire (1996) and Vanilla Sky (2001).
All of Crowe's movies, and Elizabethtown is no exception, have great soundtracks. One of the problems with the film is that Crowe uses the music as a crutch and instead of ending a scene, or the entire movie for that matter, he presses play to a sentimental Elton John song and hopes the audience grasps some sort of closure.
The failure of Elizabethtown can't solely be blamed on Crowe and his lack of direction and shoddy writing. When you combine Crowe's awful dialogue with Orlando Bloom's lack of skill in the acting department, you get one huge mess with only the annoying Kirsten Dunst left to clean it up.
I can't really get into the plot of the movie because I'm not sure what it was actually about. From the trailer you would think Elizabethtown is about a cute boy who meets a quirky airline stewardess. Wrong. Although this happens during the film, there is another two plus hours dedicated to the confusing storyline of Bloom's character going back to his recently deceased father's hometown to bring the body to the family in California; or is it Oregon? The film never really cleared that up.
Parts of the movie had promise, but it is as if Crowe took a bunch of thoughts, stuck them in a hat and randomly drew out which one to edit in next. Don't even ask about the timeline of the movie because I'm still trying to figure out if the movie took place over four days, four weeks or four months.
Like Almost Famous, Elizabethtown is a semi-autobiographical recollection of Crowe's experience of losing his father in the late 80's. If I were Crowe's father I would have asked for my money back.
