Kentucky fried cheese

Beware Elizabethtown's sentimental journey.

By Cheryl Eddy

"There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco," humiliated shoe designer Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) explains early in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown. It's pretty bold of Crowe to kick off his first film since 2001's Vanilla Sky with such an observation – especially since Elizabethtown proves far more alienating than that movie, even without Tom Cruise in a fright mask.

"A fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions," Drew says. I don't know if "mythic" applies to Elizabethtown, but unsuspecting audiences may benefit from a certain amount of disaster preparedness. The movie starts off kinda Jerry Maguire: When Drew's sneaker project bombs, he's fired from his Nike-like company by his Phil Knight-like boss (Alec Baldwin). The next logical step is, of course, to plot an elaborate suicide – until Crowe goes all Garden State, kills off Drew's father, and dispatches the morose lad to Elizabethtown, Ky., home to the quirky relations his Oregon-based pops was visiting when he died. Much family bonding, an over-the-top memorial, and wall-to-wall rock songs on the soundtrack ensue.

Oh yeah, and there's a romance, forged oh-so-sweetly between Drew and a flight attendant named Claire (Kirsten Dunst, whose fake-o Southern drawl is far more distracting than Bloom's mostly convincing American accent). Imagine Almost Famous's Penny Lane, except without a dark side, and you'll get an idea of Claire: sunny, sparkly, and mysteriously able to devote huge chunks of time to simply hangin' with her man. After meeting on Drew's Louisville-bound flight, the fledgling couple enjoys an all-night cell phone chat session, exchanging deep thoughts ("I think I've been asleep most of my life." "Me too!"). Flirty in-person interactions (including, improbably, while Drew shops for an urn to hold his father's ashes) soon follow.

The cringe-worthy scenes between Claire and Drew call Crowe's reputation as a gifted writer into serious question. "We're the substitute people," Claire informs Drew, referencing the fact that they're both rebounding from unhappy relationships. (Yep, in Elizabethtown's version of reality, both hotties are someone's second choice.) The zany, bubbly Claire is 100 percent screenwriter's fantasy, but at least Dunst is able to make her endearing. Bloom, on the other hand, couldn't be more boring – it's been widely reported that Ashton Kutcher was originally slated to play Drew, and as horrifying as that sounds on paper, I'm not sure the end result would've been much different.

Though Elizabethtown is hindered by its soulless leading man, the blame for its failure must be placed on Crowe, not Bloom. The filmmaker is skilled at crafting memorable moments (Lloyd Dobler and his boom box) and catchphrases ("Show me the money!"), and with Almost Famous, he proved he could mine success from a uniquely personal story. Elizabethtown is also based on Crowe's life, but its familiar plot and broad themes (reconnecting with family, discovering what's really important) are pretty ho-hum compared to, say, a teenage journalist hanging with rock stars.

Elizabethtown also suffers from a general lack of coherence. The story just kind of meanders along, pausing to check in with it s patchwork of eccentric characters (Susan Sarandon as Drew's grieving, manic mother; Paul Schneider as Drew's Lynyrd Skynyrd-obsessed cousin; Drew's late father, remembered in hazy flashbacks) and occasionally reminding us about Drew's unconvincing suicide pact with himself. Hollywood filmmakers rarely mold their romantic comedies into anything other than the standard three acts, and it says something about Crowe's big-name clout that Elizabethtown is allowed to find its own rhythm. But the film is so Hollywood – filled with swelling Elton John choruses, contrived life lessons, and the like – that its conventional elements clash with its relatively free-form structure.

Making matters worse: I first saw Elizabethtown at the Toronto International Film Festival, when it was a 135-minute work in progress. The theatrical version is 123 minutes; the most welcome editing-room casualty is a silly coda addressing Drew's career woes. Bafflingly, still in the film is Drew's extended road trip with Dad's ashes, which thinks nothing of appropriating the sites of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and the Oklahoma City bombing as part of Drew's sentimental journey. Très tacky, Mr. Crowe.

'Elizabethtown' opens Fri/14 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for showtimes.