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Elizabethtown

Kim and I went to see the new movie Elizabethtown on Friday night.  I liked it a lot; initial reactions can’t always be trusted, but so far I’m thinking it’s one of my favorite movies ever.  It’s Truman Show quality as far as I’m concerned.

The movie has so many different facets and random rabbit-trails everywhere.  The main character (Drew Baylor, played by Orlando Bloom) is so quirky and so funny without really trying to be (like the scene where he’s waving his fingers over his cell phone saying "someone call me back").  He’s sort of really quiet, but you hear his thoughts overdubbed through a lot of the movie, and his expressions say a lot.

Elizabethtown is a sad movie in some ways, but it’s funny as I said, and it’s got the cute love-story element (Kirsten Dunst plays the lead female) too.  Fortunately the love-story element isn’t obnoxious or overly cheesy, either.  Overall the movie is just really interesting; it tells an interesting (if not novel) story with interesting characters.

The Truman Show is one of my favorite movies (maybe even #1), and Elizabethtown has some of the same kind of quirky humor as that movie.  It also is sort of funny in the ways that Napoleon Dynamite is funny.  There’s just a lot of really random non-slapstick interestingly funny stuff in it.

So I highly recommend this movie.  And Kim does too.

Posted by Anthony on Oct 16, 2005 | 2 replies
Filed under: Movies

Comments:

01. Oct 17, 2005 at 09:25am by andy:

Is Orlando Bloom’s performance different enough in this movie to make his character easy to separate from the elf image, as it were?

I only mention this because as Bloom was in one movie prior to LOTR, likewise Hugo Weaving wasn’t really in anything (that i’d call memorable) of note prior to the Matrix (agent smith)... once he was thrown into Lord of the Rings it just felt like the crazy AI computer program protecting the matrix just put on some elf clothes and got new ears. 

On the other side of this, if you’ve ever seen anything with Philip Seymour Hoffman in it, then I suggest going to see "Capote", and then watching "Punch Drunk Love" ... not only are they both good movies but it doesn’t even seem like the same guy playing the roles he’s credited for in both movies.

I’m obviously in desperate need of sleep to be writing THIS kind of thing at this hour of the morning.

02. Oct 17, 2005 at 09:40am by Anthony:

It’s funny you ask that, because I didn’t even realize it was the same actor.  (I’m obviously not hugely into Lord of the Rings.  I watched all 3 movies in a span of 2 or 3 weeks, about a year ago, and they are all a blur now.)  On the way home from the movie, Kim was trying to help me remember Bloom’s character in LOTR, and for the life of me I couldn’t picture him at all.  He had long, straight, blonde hair that was always in a ponytail, whereas in Elizabethtown it’s curly, relatively short, dark hair that’s all around his face, etc.

That being said though, it seems to me that if I had remembered him as the LOTR character while watching Elizabethtown, it would have probably only made his already-funny expressions and commentary even more funny.

To actually answer your question though: I’m not really sure because I don’t really remember much about Bloom in LOTR.  But I can say that in Elizabethtown, he’s the central character, and the whole point of the story is to develop his character.  Neither of those can really be said about the elf in LOTR.

On the Agent Smith tip though, I’m with you completely -- when he first appeared in whatever scene in LOTR, I was like "what the heck is Agent Smith doing in here??"

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