Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Elizabethtown Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 2, 2021

Elizabethtown is genre soup, a film that blends Rom-Com, family drama, small town charm and peculiarities, the road trip, and music all to relatively effective result. Cameron Crowe, best known for the coming-of-age film Almost Famous, builds a story based in part on his own life experiences, telling the story of a young businessman in dire emotional distress and finding love, purpose, and himself in rural America. The core elements are not new or noteworthy, but Crowe's ability to paint full and vivid character portraits and capture the essence of small town life and big heart love make for an agreeable film that is more than the sum of its parts.

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Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) works for a high profile shoe company and he personally developed what he, and his company, believed would be the greatest shoe ever made. But when there’s a massive recall and the company is poised to lose upwards of a billion dollars, he’s fired. The shoes were his life; he spent much of his career designing them and with no career to continue his life suddenly loses its meaning. His phone rings, interrupting his plan to commit suicide in quite an inventive, almost comical, way. It’s his sister (Judy Greer) telling him their father has died. Drew heads to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to retrieve the body with plans on returning home thereafter and finish what dad and sister interrupted. On his near empty red eye flight to Louisville, he meets a flight attendant, Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst), who takes an immediate liking to him. She gives him directions, and her phone number, upon departure. Drew finally arrives in picturesque Elizabethtown and meets an eccentric collection of relatives and friends of his father, all with their own stories of life and friendship and their own wants and desires for his burial. As Drew maneuvers through his darkness in the bright light in which his father is fondly remembered around town, he reconnects with Claire and builds a budding relationship that might just save his life.

For Drew, the trip to Elizabethtown comes just in the nick of time. Ironically it is his father's passing which may very well save his own life. Drew discovers a way of life in Elizabethtown that's different from his familiar work-focused existence. It's more cordial, more relaxed, with less demand on his time and certainly without so much at stake, at least not in terms of those things he holds most dear. Drew will learn that reputation is earned not from workplace success -- which can be extremely fleeting, as he now well knows -- but rather success at life. He finds a whole town mourning a man who has at best been distant from him and plenty of people, on both sides of the family and beyond, who greatly respected him even if he wasn't a once-king of a billion dollar industry. Happenstance also smiles on Drew when he meets Claire, further giving him a sense of belonging and identity in something other than the shadow of his monumental failure (and monumental father).

That said, there's not much here, narratively speaking, to separate it from a cut and paste Hallmark movie, but the difference comes in Cameron Crowe's ability to express and bring life to the film beyond its otherwise familiar notes. The film is written with passion rather than by rote. Crowe molds the formula to his own whims, with typically expressive and tone-defining music but also a sense of command for the little things that elevate the material beyond the flimsy foundation and build his characters beyond stock. Bloom and Dunst are strong in the leads, giving shape to their characters and their growth. Bloom is particularly good in finding the hope in his grief and a chance at forward movement in the shadow of failure and the burden of his father's death. He maintains a critical levity in his early film despair and shows a range of character depth and growing understanding for how his sudden experiences are changing his life. Crowe and Bloom both nicely balance that juxtaposition of halting momentum and forward momentum with impressive desire to build the story and the character with real, tangible soul rather than generic story-moving content.

Elizabethtown Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Paramount's been on top of its game with its "Paramount Presents" titles, and Elizabethtown's 1080p presentation is another hugely successful and faithfully filmic presentation. The picture, sourced from a new 4K master supervised by Crowe himself, looks terrific. It's true to its film state and effortlessly so. Organic grain holds steady for the duration. Textures are incredibly sharp with natural definition to all of the critical elements, including skin and clothes but also so many of the small-town charms in various exteriors, not to mention more complex elements inside the hotel or within cluttered houses. Colors are faithful and accurate with plenty of depth and brilliance on display. Bold tones leap off the screen in well-saturated displays of fine color fidelity, particularly under good, natural light. Low light interiors are also of a high quality casting a warmth on skin. Black levels are strong and skin tones are natural. The picture reveals no print flaws or encode anomalies. Elizabethtown couldn't look much better.

Elizabethtown Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is of a sound quality. It's effortlessly spacious with good directional effects and plenty of opportunities for discrete sound appearances. Everything plays in good balance in addition to fine clarity, allowing audiences to soak in the small ambience around the town or the larger din inside a hotel where wedding guests are partying it up. Music -- whether Crowe's hand-selected popular tunes or Nancy Wilson's score -- enjoys excellent fidelity and natural stretch and depth around the stage. Dialogue is the chief sonic mover, though, and it plays with excellent detail and firm front-center placement.

Elizabethtown Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Elizabethtown includes new retrospective and vintage featurettes, deleted scenes, a photo gallery, and trailers. This release is the 14th in the "Paramount Presents" line and includes the slipcover with fold-open poster artwork. A digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Filmmaker Focus: Cameron Crowe on Elizabethtown (1080p, 6:22): Crowe discusses project origins and ideas, characters and performances, locations, audience response, and the movie's purpose and themes.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p, 23:49 total runtime): Following Introduction by Cameron Crowe are the following scenes: The Shoes They Wear, A Student of Phil, Chuck Moves Back the Reception, Rusty's Learning to Listen Part 8, Chuck and Cindy Are Less Than Pleased, It's Only a Funeral, Hanging with Russell in Memphis, and Alternate Ending.
• On the Road to Elizabethtown (480i, 13:49): Cast and crew talk about the movie's reflection of "life." Crowe reflects on project origins soured from his life story and the piece continues to look at cast and characters, cast chemistry, shooting locations, and more.
• The Music of Elizabethtown (480i, 5:32): Crowe discusses the importance of music in this film and in his vision for filmmaking.
• "Meet the Crew" Featurette (480i, 2:35): Video clips and title identifiers for various people who worked on the film.
• "Training Wheels" Featurette (480i, 2:21): Rehearsal footage set to music.
• Photo Gallery by Neal Preston (1080p): Categorized still photo collections. Included are Behind the Scenes; Mercury; Drew Baylor; Mitch, Hollie, Drew and Heather: The Baylors; Claire Colburn; Drew & Claire; Kentucky; The Memorial; The Funeral; and Road Trip.
• Trailers & TV Spots (1080p, 5:17 total runtime): Included are Bad Day, Drew, and 30 Seconds in Elizabethtown.

Elizabethtown Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Elizabethtown is built on familiar beats but Crowe and his cast guide the story upward beyond the familiarities to create a likeable tale of refocus and maybe even redemption in the little things. It's smartly written and well acted. Paramount's Blu-ray delivers near flawless video and audio and a quality assortment of extra content. Recommended.