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Cameron Crowe returns home in 'Elizabethtown'

Although it seems a tad too calculated, Elizabethtown is writer-director Cameron Crowe (Say Anything, Almost Famous) returning to his strength of music-based romantic comedy with a personal connection. It may not be his best film, but a couple of sequences late in the movie are as good as anything he has made.

It begins as a meditation on failure, giant public failure, and it seems likely that Crowe is alluding to his previous film Vanilla Sky, a muddled, Americanized remake of Alejandro Amenabar's Open Your Eyes. If nothing else, it gives Elizabethtown an easy act to follow.

Paramount Pictures 'Elizabethtown' B The verdict: A typical Crowe romantic comedy that works best in the late going. Director: Cameron Crowe Starring: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Biel, Judy Greer Run time: 133 minutes Release date: Oct. 14, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for language and some sexual references. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Elizabethtown'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

The Crowe stand-in this time around is Orlando Bloom, playing young hotshot sports shoe designer Drew Baylor, whose creation is such an unmitigated disaster that Drew's boss (Alec Baldwin) projects it will cost the company close to a billion dollars. It will go down in history as one of the all-time business fiascoes and will take Drew's career with it.

Drew's fair-weather girlfriend dumps him, he proves inept at committing suicide, but then receives a putting-it-in-perspective phone call. His father has died while in his hometown of Elizabethtown, Ky., and Drew has been appointed the responsible offspring to fly there, taking along a burial blue suit and making the funeral arrangements.

Just as Drew hits bottom, he boards the red-eye flight and encounters a blazing ray of sunshine in the person of flight attendant Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst of the mega-watt smile and dimple). Sensing something wrong, she makes a perfect pest of herself, but adorably so, giving Drew detailed directions to Elizabethtown and her phone number.

After getting hopelessly lost, Drew finds the family homestead and is welcomed into a large eccentric clan. In the movie's overlong middle section, Drew deals with his relatives, who have definite opinions about his father's interment. And by night, he gets to know Claire better, marking time until his father's memorial service.

There the first of the two killer scenes occur, when Drew's mother (Susan Sarandon) takes the microphone. Out of the picture for most of the picture, Sarandon's character has been dealing with her grief by jumping into activities like tap dance and stand-up comedy. Her eulogy to her husband is darkly comic and Sarandon all but steals the film with her delivery.

The other sequence is Elizabethtown's emotional finale, which involves a cross-country trip that is a valentine to America's heartland, as is the entire movie.

Like Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, Dunst takes her place among the winsome kooks who populate Crowe's movies, and Bloom is aptly perplexed in his first major role out of a toga, pirate duds or Middle Earth gear.

And like all other Crowe films, the radio is always blasting with evocative tunes, from My Morning Jacket to Elton John, a carefully selected soundtrack that weaves rock, bluegrass and oldies throughout the entire journey.