Talking Sweet About Nothing

OK, so Elizabethtown is clearly Crowe’s weakest effort. But the man has, in many ways, set the bar for putting love stories on film and backing them with exceptional soundtracks. He’s done other types of films, but this genre is where he’s made his mark on mainstream audiences.

Yes, I walked away from Elizabethtown slightly puzzled. I like the movie, but it seems the most unfinished and uneven of any of Crowe films. What works works great, and what doesn't work doesn't make me go crazy with how bad it is or anything, but it just feels flat.

I think a lot of my friends expect me to adamantly defend it. I've been known to argue and there are hundreds of films that I will champion until I’m blue in the face, but this isn’t one of them. It’s not a matter of whether you “get” the film – after all, it’s fairly transparent. It’s a matter of whether you’ve “felt” the film. The weight of this film rests entirely on what you bring in with you, not what Crowe gives you to take away.

This is an appropriate quote about Cameron Crowe:

"He is the Jack Kerouac of contemporary American cinema, tempered with a healthy dose of Norman Rockwell, offering up sentimental snapshots culled from his life and the lives of those around him, treating us to raw, distilled emotion that roots itself in the universal experiences we all share. Crowe doesn’t create something new and different for us to revel in, rather, he wins us over with familiarity, with his ability to tell stories we can relate to on a very human level."

But not everyone wants that, not everyone can relate to the stories he tells. And that’s the biggest problem with Cameron Crowe’s films, especially Elizabethtown. You cannot simply love his films for the way he tells his stories. You cannot love them for any sort of unique visual style, for any sort of subtlety. The heart and soul of Crowe’s work relies entirely on being able to relate to the story he’s telling. It relies entirely upon being able to say “Man, I know exactly what you’re saying. I’ve totally been there.” And if you can’t relate, if you haven’t been there, well, it’s just another story that’s occasionally funny, somewhat hokey and chock full of music you may or may not like.