‘Elizabethtown’ not worth visiting

A list of the klutzy things in “Elizabethtown”: Susan Sarandon’s role; Orlando Bloom’s charm-free performance; most of Kirsten Dunst’s dialogue; the decision to have a character express her grief through tap-dancing; the cut of Alec Baldwin’s sports coat; the absence of African-Americans in a Kentucky town where the population is 10 percent black; and the movie’s second, third, fourth, sixth and eighth endings.

I want to be specific here because “Elizabethtown” is clearly intended as a serious work of art, and it is seriously disappointing. Cameron Crowe, who wrote and directed it (along with such fine films as “Jerry Maguire”) is a talented man out of touch with his gifts. He wrote a script that goes on and on without saying anything and nudged his actors into performances that have no connection with the way people behave.

For example, the movie hinges on the death of an Elizabethtown, Ky., native. He has lived on the West Coast for many years with his wife (Sarandon), but the funeral will be in Elizabethtown. He was beloved, and his death should be a momentous occasion for his wife and grown children (Orlando Bloom, Judy Greer), but the movie immediately has them doing shtick like characters on a bad UPN sitcom. And, for reasons the movie doesn’t explain, Sarandon plans to blow off her husband’s funeral – possibly because she’s too busy practicing her soft-shoe eulogy?

The main storyline of “Elizabethtown” involves Bloom in a business crisis exactly like Tom Cruise’s in “Maguire,” except not at all interesting or believable. He chucks it all and travels to Elizabethtown to forget his troubles, hang around with one of those pushy/cute free spirits you meet only in the movies (Dunst) and listen to what we can only assume is Crowe’s iPod playlist, a mind-numbing overload of songs that clog the soundtrack and tell us exactly what to think at every moment of the film.

Apparently, this material is personal to Crowe, who went to Elizabethtown after his dad died, and he’s clearly shooting for something significant and honest. But his aim is false. “Elizabethtown” sticks to a pattern – joke, pronouncement about life, meaningful song, repeat – that becomes irritating and then pretentious and, finally, unbearable.