Elizabethtown
I thought it was surprisingly good! I mean, really, what more can you expect when you are dealing with a romantic comedy featuring Legolas?
The German Wikipedia article calls the film a “Tragikomödie” and the English one calls Kirsten Dunst’s character ‘bubbly, shallow cinematic creature’. I agree with the first assertion (the film was actually much more serious and attempted to be much deeper than I thought!) but the second one – what the heck. Neither the film nor its characters are oozing smartness, and I think that is completely besides the point. Characters in romantic comedies are way too overlooked: Because of all the clichés, they can seem amazingly stupid, but let’s face it. Humans are stupid. If they would act all smartly, they wouldn’t be real or have any value as everyday-type characters. And on the other hand, a ‘shallow’ character like Kirsten Dunst’s in this film can say things that seem silly but show some sort of reflection upon herself, the world and whatnot. These little truths coming out of the mouth of a girl from some small town in the south of the U.S. can just as well be as meaningful and, well, true as anybody else’s. If everybody’s life was so observant and full of those many little details in a Hollywoodian romantic comedy – the world would be a better, richer place. To me, Claire was a perfectly likable character.
I am a sucker for road trips. If it wasn’t for that all so cheesy ending, the little part about the road trip perfectly makes sense to me. Normally road trip movies are all about the trip itself, finding yourself (or your love, for that matter) on the road, dealing with shitty interhuman relationships along the line; here, it is also about the things he saw and his interaction with the environment as some quasi-tourist – alone. He is doing the road trip I want to do, that alone is very valuable to me.
Apart from that, yes the story is silly, but a lot of fun. Paula Deen is lovely, the whole environment and the romanticism of the South is absolutely lovely (yeah, here’s a secret admirer of all things Southern speaking – turkey hashbrown casserole!) and finally, the film actually had a bunch of funny scenes. For me, “Elizabethtown” was one of the better romantic comedies, it felt very ‘me’, at least.