Homespun tale, spinning wildly

With Say Anything, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, writer-director Cameron Crowe set the bar so high that you forgive him a miss like Vanilla Sky.

Elizabethtown, in which a sneaker designer wonders whether his dud of a product launch qualifies as a failure or a fiasco, is an unmitigated, inexplicable, unforgivable flop.

Orlando Bloom stars as the shell-shocked Drew Baylor, designer for Mercury, a Nike-like firm, who is recalled to company headquarters as his defective shoe is recalled from every Foot Locker around the globe.

Before Drew can crawl into bed and pull the covers over his head, his billionaire boss, Phil (a caricature of Nike's Phil Knight, played with brio by Alec Baldwin), demands that Drew sit with Business Week and take the fall for costing shareholders $982 million. Elizabethtown's one fascinating character, Phil is that New Age combination of egomania and eco-friendliness that could be the subject of another, better Crowe satire.

Alas, the movie is about Drew. I think. And as he contemplates suicide in an apartment filled with the fruits of Silicon Valley, he gets the call. Dad died; go to Elizabethtown, Ky., where he was visiting his brother, and bring back the body to Oregon.

Thus, what begins as the portrait of an artist among corporate cutthroats morphs into the portrait of a morose lad who, in facing the death of a parent, is himself reborn. I liked that movie when it was called Garden State. But I don't much like Crowe's crewelwork sampler of Smalltown USA, where everyone knows your name and knew your father.

Nor did I buy that the emotionally shut-down Drew would be open to the overtures of Claire (Kirsten Dunst), the flight attendant who insinuates herself into his life with a stalker's zeal.

I admire Crowe for the ambition and scope of his films, that he dares to combine social study with romantic comedy with generational group portrait (Singles), or character study with romantic comedy with workplace satire with feminist and corporate critiques (Jerry Maguire). It's great to see a filmmaker who doesn't make films that conform to the conventional template, one who can keep narrative plates spinning without any of them crashing.

But the tangled tangents of Elizabethtown are shapeless. It's a workplace satire! It's a portrait of grief! It's an inventory of death styles of the Almost Infamous! It's a romantic comedy! It's an ode to the ways we say goodbye to the living and the dead! And, finally, it's a road movie threading through America's heartland. Crowe doesn't find the through line that connects his disparate observations.

Elizabethtown serves neither its audience nor its actors. Bloom, Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer and Bruce McGill seesaw from listlessness to forced gaiety, just like the movie they're in. Not even the soundtrack can save this Crowe effort.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey

at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.

Elizabethtown

** (out of four stars)

Produced by Cameron Crowe, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, photography by John Toll, music by Nancy Wilson, distributed by Paramount Pictures.

Running time: 2 hours, 3 mins.

Drew Baylor. . . Orlando Bloom

Claire Colburn. . . Kirsten Dunst

Phil DeVoss. . . Alec Baldwin

Ellen Kishmore. . . Jessica Biel

Hollie Baylor. . . Susan Sarandon

Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity, sexual candor)

Playing at: area theaters