Rent Elizabethtown (2005)

THis is actually the worst film ever - Elizabethtown review by CP Customer

No, it really is. I would not even have given it one star if the program would have let me. Its really bad. There is no plot and it drags. Actually, I don't know how I got to the end. Probably because I was on the phone!

Pretty mediocre stuff. - Elizabethtown review by CP Customer

Drew Baylor is a seemingly successful 27 year old who is fired from his job at a shoe firm after an unsuccessful product launch costs the company almost a billion dollars. On the verge of suicide, he learns that his father has died and he must fly to Elizabethtown Kentucky to organize the funeral. Overall the film doesn't have much of a plot; it's a collection of small moments involving Drew's relationship with the Kentucky branch of his family, his relationship with a flight attendant named Claire who he meets on his flight to Kentucky, as well as a glimpse of his mother and sister dealing with his fathers death. But the heart of the story is about a good but slightly inept man who learns to grow up and face the world. All in all, despite the film's clever one liners and quirky humour, things really don't get going, and Orlando Bloom shows yet again he's not a particularly good actor.

Mixtapes, Missteps and a Long Way Home - Elizabethtown review by griggs

I was primed for a disaster, so low expectations probably helped. Elizabethtown isn’t the catastrophe its reputation suggests; it’s more like a delayed train that occasionally reveals lovely scenery. There’s real oddness here – suicidal shoe designer, malfunctioning death machine, grief filtered through mixtapes – that marks it as pure Cameron Crowe rather than a Nora Ephron clone, even if it’s aiming for the same bittersweet heart-tug.

Plenty of it lands. The humour is properly laugh-out-loud, the soundtrack is predictably superb, and Kirsten Dunst finds grace notes in a character who could have been unbearable on the page. Orlando Bloom’s accent, however, sounds like it got lost somewhere over the Midwest.

The road trip finale clearly wants to be a grand emotional crescendo, but on screen it plays more like a nicely illustrated playlist. In the end, Elizabethtown is a curious near-miss: too sincere to dismiss, too messy to fully embrace.