One and a Half Thumbs Down

Looking back through the archives of this “journal” I have, over the course of 40 something posts, made a few things very clear. My love of baseball. My hatred of Beyonce. My complete indifference to spell check. But one thing that I could not possibly stress enough even if I devoted every entry from now until the end of time solely to discussing it, is my deep passion for all things Cameron Crowe. Bono may be God and The Beatles may be the greatest artists in any medium ever, but no one “speaks to me” in a more personal way than Cameron Crowe. He’s the writer/director I would be if I were a writer/director. And if I were talented. On the very top of my list of things to do before I die is to be in a Cameron Crowe movie. And even if it means one day I have to quit my job to fly to China to be an extra on his movie about a Chinese guy who comes of age with the help of a too-good-to-be true girl, rock music, and his own innate optimism, then that’s what Ill do. Even if it means I’ll have to put off doing other things on my list, like heaving a bag of flaming dog shit at Bill O’Reilly, I’ll do it. That’s how much I love Cameron Crowe. Depending on the day and my mood, I could maybe say that he has written and directed each of my top four movies. And he’s only made four movies! (And don’t try and tell me Fast Times at Ridgemont High counts because it doesn’t. He only wrote it and didn’t direct it, and therefore it’s disqualified. And Singles doesn’t count because Singles never happened.) So naturally, to say I was excited about seeing Elizabethtown would be like saying Matt Dillon was excited the day they filmed the threesome scene in Wild Things. Which is to say I was very excited.

And then of course, I actually SAW Elizabethtown.

Now to be fair to Elizabethtown, it wasn’t as bad as most people have made it out to be. But then, the more I think about it, I think maybe I’m just too in denial to accept the truth. But then again, I think it wasn’t that it was so bad on its own terms, it was just bad considering what it could have been. And should have been. It should have been the movie Garden State wanted to be. It should have been my new favorite movie. It should have been the best Cameron Crowe film yet. I mean, I can’t think of an outline for a movie I would possibly like more: Guy fails at his job in the big city, becomes numb to the world, then has to go home to deal with his father’s death, and while there, he comes to terms with his southern roots and is helped on the road to redemption by music and by a girl who seems too good to be true but who hides demons of her own just beneath the surface. It was like Cameron read my mind and made the exact movie I would want to make if I made movies. He even threw in southern rock, a road trip, and eccentric southern relatives to complete his personal appeal to my heart. Only problem was on the road to creating my favorite movie of all-time he forgot one simple ingredient - to make a good movie. Instead he made a movie that was just wildly disappointing. As I told Lauren Morelli the other day, “It’s the only movie I’ve ever seen where I laughed, I cried, I cheered, I sat on the edge of my seat, and when it was over thought, ‘well that sucked.’”

And so I’ve now made it my personal mission in life to one day remake the movie the way it should have been made. But in order for my remake to be successful I need to analyze what worked, what didn’t work, and what REALLY didn’t work. So if you’ll allow me a little cathartic reflection here Ill delve into The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Elizabethtown.

Note: If you haven’t seen Elizabethtown yet you should stop reading now because this contains more spoilers than the What Lies Beneath trailer. Also because you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about. But then again, do you ever?

The Good:

*The music: It’s a Cameron Crowe movie so of course the use of music was outstanding. The “My Father’s Gun” scene and the “Freebird” scene rank up there among the very best Cameron Crowe music moments. They may not quite be “Tiny Dancer” in Almost Famous or “In Your Eyes” in Say Anything… but then what is? They are definitely on a level with “River” in Almost Famous and “Good Vibrations” in Vanilla Sky though. And there enough more good music moments that once again I have another Cameron Crowe movie soundtrack on my Christmas list. But I think we could have called that before I even saw it. I read in an interview with Cameron that he and Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino have an unofficial rivalry in regards to who can make the best use of existing pop songs in their movies. Well Cameron once again raised the stakes. Looks like you’ll have to do better than Dutch covers of David Bowie songs next time Wes. In fact there’s no way you could ever top Cameron so you should just give it up. And really after he became the first person to use “Solsbury Hill” in a trailer, wasn’t this competition pretty much over anyway? So Wes, just stop. Quit making movies altogether. What’s the point? Noah Baumbach is now all ready to take over for you. So quit now and hand over the reins. And while you’re at it, get the avian flu.

(Although I have to say that as great as it was, the “Freebird” scene was completely implausible. I mean why would the band keep playing in those circumstances? And what does it say about Cameron that so many of the best moments in his movies come when there’s only music playing and no dialogue? And why does it feel like maybe he would have been better off just making Elizabethtown a long music video with no speaking? And why did it feel like there was a little too much music and that it was being used to substitute for actual emotion? And that it seemed like he was trying to hard with his musical choices this time? And why do these things keep me up at night? And what does it say about the movie that all of this is under the heading “The Good”? And why am I going now to gouge my eyes out with a spoon?)

*Kirsten Dunst
I hate Kirsten Dunst. I am using the word hate here to describe Kirsten Dunst. I hate her personality. I hate her acting. I hate Jake Gyllenhaal by association. (Although after seeing Proof I think I can safely say I hate Jake Gyllenhaal on his own terms.) But the point is I really hate Kirsten Dunst. And yet I really liked her in this movie. A lot. In fact it almost made me rethink my whole anti-Kirsten Dunst position. Almost. Now don’t get me wrong, I still think casting her as Penny Lane would have been the worst disaster to befall American cinema since Singles. That is if Singles had ever actually happened. Which it didn’t. But at least now I could see how Cameron could have considered her for that role. And I have now said something nice about Kirsten Dunst. And if you want to include Virgin Suicides and Eternal Sunshine then I may have said three nice things about Kirsten Dunst.
And I also may hate myself in the morning.
So lets just pretend we never had this conversation shall we?

(Good as she may have been though, I still think a better actress could have done much more with that part. Like Rachael McAdams. Or my dead grandmother. And thinking too much about this movie might drive me insane. Moving on….)

*The “Cameron Crowe moments”: The almost kiss at the gas station. Orlando’s flashbacks to his memories of his father. The scene in the graveyard. The “My Father’s Gun” montage of family members. The first drive into town (which would have brilliant if it had been set up properly). Simple lines of dialogue like “we peaked on the phone” and “everyone is less mysterious than they think they are”. It’s in little things like these that the Cameron Crowe touch shines through and makes your $10.75 worth every penny.

The Bad:

*The pacing: It wasn’t that it was slow, it was just that so many scenes seemed unnecessary. Like for example, well, all of them.

*The implausibility of the road trip: a good concept but laughably implausible. I mean how could everything be timed out so precisely? Give me a break. But even with that being said I almost would have just gone along with it if only Cameron hadn’t included the part where the tape is timed out to know the exact moment the business magazine with Orlando Bloom on the cover would hit one specific newsstand. With that moment any shred of plausibility the road trip was clinging to went flying out the window like my dignity at a dance party.

*The fact it doesn’t end when it should: I said it to Garden State and Ill say it to you too Elizabethtown. You’re a movie about a guy coming of age in his own unique way - you shouldn’t reduce yourself to a trite love story. The “love story” is just one simple part of a much bigger whole. So don’t tack on some crowd-pleasing studio-mandated ending where you unrealistically reunite the guy with the girl. End when you should have - with the car riding off into the distance as your protagonist scatters his father’s ashes along the open road of some country highway with no one around for miles. You had a PERFECT last shot and you pussied out. Did you not watch A.I: Artificial Intelligence? When you’ve got a perfect ending, have the balls to use it. This is the most common complaint I have with movies these days. They so many times have scenes in them that would make perfect endings, but the filmmakers pussy out and feel the need to tack on some lame unnecessary resolution scene because they think we, the audience, need it. We don’t. Leave stuff unresolved. Leave us wanting more, not less. A good rule for all things in life. Especially movies.

*The fact that Cameron was repeating himself: Susan Sarandon was clearly playing his real life mother and Judy Greer was clearly playing his real life sister, which would be fine except for the fact that he already used both of them as prominent characters in a previous movie and so it seems like Susan Sarandon and Judy Greer are just doing bad Frances McDormand and Zooey Deschanel impersonations. And it’s distracting seeing the same characters played by new people, but there being no acknowledgment made that they are indeed the same characters. And the “taking pictures with an imaginary camera” thing Kristen Dunst does is a Penny Lane thing. And the wedding party at the hotel was just a take off on the Riot House. And it all just goes to show once you’ve done one overtly autobiographical movie you can’t reuse elements of that movie in any of your other movies. Unless of course you’re Woody Allen.

The Ugly:

*The beginning: Other than the last item on this list this was the most easily fixable thing that hurt the movie the most. (If that makes any sense.) If we don’t care about Drew and his failure and really become invested in his fall from grace, then movie doesn’t work. But instead of taking the time to allow us to do those things, the movie instead asked to care too much and too soon about a character we barely know. And to compound the problem, the movie tries to make jokes in the middle of his suffering leaving us completely confused as to how we’re supposed to be feeling. It all leads to a scene of him trying to kill himself using a knife taped to a bike, only the knife keeps falling off so he cant go through with it. This moment in many ways encapsulates so much about why the whole movie didn’t work. The tone is just completely off. Now I get what Cameron was going for – this guy’s life is so pathetic he can’t even kill himself properly. But if you don’t make his pain real and palpable and instead make jokes about it, then how can you expect the audience to care at all about his redemption? You can’t. And that’s just one bad choice among many that contribute to make the first segment of the movie a complete failure. The decision to make Alec Baldwin’s character so cartoonish, the decision to make the amount of money lost a little over the top and unrealistic, and the decision to make the issue at hand be shoes (the oddest choice of all as it's somewhat hard to take shoes seriously as the source of a life crippling tragedy) are all the wrong choices and they all contribute to throw the whole tone of the first scenes off. And since the first scenes set up the whole rest of the movie, if they don’t work then the movie doesn’t work. If you don’t feel Drew’s pain when he empties out his apartment then the emotions you should feel on his first drive through Elizabethtown wont be there. And they weren’t. But you could almost feel what they should have been had then been there. And that feeling of knowing that you SHOULD be feeling something, is way more feeling than anything that came before it in the movie caused me to feel.
And none of that made any sense.
Elizabethtown has officially driven me insane.

*The structure: I’ve seen the movie described as a series of disjointed vignettes. And I agree. And I hate to say it, but that’s solely the screenplay’s fault. Which means that almost more than anything else the movie didn’t work because of its screenplay. And that’s something I thought I would NEVER have to say about a Cameron Crowe movie.

*Orlando Bloom: When Elizabethtown was first announced several years ago as Cameron Crowe’s next project he had originally cast Ashton Kutcher as the lead. And that’s when I first started to worry about Elizabethtown. But then Cameron decided to let Ashton go and recast the part. “Whew”, I thought, “dodged that bullet”. I mean anyone else in the whole world had to be an improvement over Ashton Kutcher right? Wrong. There was someone worse. MUCH worse. And that person was Orlando Bloom. If this movie doesn’t ruin his entire career and ensure that he will never be taken seriously as an actor ever again then some is something seriously wrong with the American movie-going public. Because in Elizabethtown Orlando Bloom gives what has to be the worst performance in my lifetime by a “serious” “name” actor. I mean I can’t think of anyone worse. And by saying “serious” I eliminate action stars like Steven Segal, Sly Stallone, and Jackie Chan as well as comedians turned actors and anyone else (athletes, singers, models, etc.) who didn’t start out as an actor but used their fame in another field to become one. And by “name” actor I eliminate every crappy actor you’ve never heard of. And by “actor” I eliminate Keanu Reeves. But with those stipulations in place I can’t think of a worse performance by an actor in a major role in a major movie, in EVER. Well at least in the past 25 years or so. I never really thought one way or the other about Orlando Bloom before Elizabethtown, but now I will never be able to take him seriously as an actor in any movie for the entire rest of his career. That’s how bad he was. The entire movie was ruined because you had a protagonist who you completely didn’t care about because he gave you no reason to. His eyes were completely vacant. His American accent was completely awkward and unbelievable. And he seemed completely overmatched acting-wise in every scene he was in, including all of his scenes he had with Kirsten Dunst, which should tell you all you need to know. Make the exact same movie and recast someone even halfway decent as the lead and you’ve got yourself a successful movie. Instead, with Orlando Bloom you have…well…not much. He says it himself in the movie – there’s a difference between a failure and a fiasco. Yes there is. Elizabethtown is only a failure. Orlando Bloom is a fiasco.



Top 3 & 1/2 of the Week:
1.) The Office Special & the last episode of Series 2
2.) Grey’s Anatomy
3.) The Squid and the Whale
3 & 1/2.) “Speak Slow” – Tegan & Sara

Thought of the Week:
When I was little it used to upset me greatly that Kevin didn’t marry Winnie at the end of The Wonder Years. Now I’ve grown into someone who gets upset by the fact that Dawn comes back for Tim at the end of The Office. That’s what age will do you I guess.