Elizabethtown is a film that doesn’t fit into a red or blue vision of America – or perhaps it fits into both. It is designed to celebrate the America that isn’t busy thinking about being red or blue – but just being the kind of people we are. Orlando Bloom, who plays Drew, the film’s central character, says “It’s… the America that I think the whole world needs to see right now, this heartland of America….”
Crowe’s films have a hopeful quality that suggests an optimistic view of the world. Crowe offers us a view (confirmed by the responses to the hurricanes) that people really do want to help the stranger in our midst. — Darrel Manson reviews
Cameron Crowe says
ELIZABETHTOWN IS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL Cameron Crowe reminisces about his father who died in 1989. The filmmaker lost his dad while resting on the laurels of his success with his directorial debut of Say Anything. He excels at is the ability to communicate how he felt. — Mike Smith reviews
A LOVE LETTER TO AMERICA
ELIZABETHTOWN Elizabethtown is a film that doesn’t fit into a red or blue vision of America – or perhaps it fits into both. It is designed to celebrate the America that isn’t busy thinking about being red or blue. —Feature article by Darrel Manson
AN INCOMPLETE CONNECTION
Because the music and the way it is woven around the performances of two of the female leads completely dominates—and distracts from—the story Crowe intended to tell. —Review by KATHY BLEDSOE
SYNOPSIS
Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" follows the story of Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom), a man down on his luck, as he journeys to his roots in small-town Kentucky to bury his father. Drew finds new life in his interactions with his colorful extended family, and in his unexpected romance with Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a quirky and persistent airline stewardess.
“How do you say goodbye to someone you’ve barely said hello to?” asks writer-director Cameron Crowe in his new film, “Elizabethtown.” Crowe, who won an Academy Award® in 2000 for his original screenplay for “Almost Famous,” again draws on his own experiences – the emotions he felt at his father’s unexpected passing – to inspire a motion picture. “Elizabethtown” is about a quiet Oregon shoe designer who gets to know his father and his own family roots only after his dad’s death. He is aided in his journey by an unstoppably optimistic woman, and a host of family members, who combine in unique ways to teach him what’s it’s like to be truly alive.
Crowe says that one of his goals with “Elizabethtown” was to make the type of film his father liked best: one that could achieve genuine emotion but always with humor close at hand. “A movie that could blend tears and laughter… that was his favorite combo,” says Crowe. “He and my mom actually had a name for that very special mix, they called it ‘Bread and Chocolate,’ after a foreign film they’d fallen in love with. Later, as a director, it became one of my favorite mixes too - a movie that introduced you to characters who felt real, who took you into their lives and when that movie was over… you missed those people you’d met two hours earlier.”
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ELIZABETHTOWN:
Cameron Crowe says
A LOVE LETTER TO AMERICA
AN INCOMPLETE CONNECTION 
