Elizabethtown

Well, I saw it, and it was so devoid of fleshing out the characters (for a film with a running time over 135 minutes, that's pretty hard to do, but Crowe manages to do so in spectacular fashion), so they are always at arm's length away, or further. When you write a film in which your audience doesn't care for the lead characters, the film is in big trouble, and that's the main failing of this film.

Claire (Kirsten Dunst) just shows up and plays perky flight attendant/life coach/cheerleader to Drew (Orlando Bloom) for no good reason except that's what she has to do. Claire is reduced to being a plot device, and the film just doesn't have much to say. Drew's mother is a total cliched character, and his sister doesn't have much to do either. Drew's relatives in Elizabethtown just aren't all that interesting.

The other thing that has started to bother me is the use of popular songs to tell the audience how they should be feeling at a given point in the film, instead of earning those feelings with good screenwriting and acting performances. Crowe has finally hit the wall with his penchant to use songs in his films.

Can't recommend the film at all, even for a matinee (Go see Wallace & Gromit or Serenity, instead).

I give it 1.75 stars, or a grade of C-.