Chick Flicks, Part 1

I've seen four movies in recent weeks that, for one reason or another, fit the bill. I'm tackling them in two parts. The bad ones are up first...

Starting with Domino, which is the least chick flick-y and also the worst. It flopped on release last weekend, no doubt because there's no stars and not much of an interesting hook.

The movie is based on the real life of Domino Harvey, daughter of Manchurian Candidate actor Laurence Harvey, who was, at various points in her life, a model and a bounty hunter. That's literally everything you learn about the real Domino from the movie, which uses her life as a jumping off point for an anything goes, contemporary "action" flick that attempts to elevate ADD filmmaking to an art-form (or at least a new cinematic language). It fails.

There's barely a shot in the film that lasts for more than a few seconds and everything is slowed down, sped up, replayed from various angles or otherwise manipulated... to zero effect. It's not cool, it's just silly. Anything that might have been cool is undercut by the fact that it's difficult to tell what the hell is happening most of the time. Yes, folks, this is the work of Tony Scott, the man behind Top Gun, Days of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout, etc. etc. He's finally made a film that would make even Michael Bay question the need for all the visual gimmicks.

Initially the script, by Donnie Darko's Richard Kelly, threatens to be amusing. Its pop-culture-sampling sensibility (the Jerry Springer show is recreated and Beverly Hills 90210 stars Brian Austin Green and Ian Ziering play themselves in small roles) suggests potential cult appeal, but it soon becomes so rambling, incoherent and, worst of all, mawkish that the feeble structure collapses entirely.

All of this leaves the actors totally stranded. That's a shame since Keira Knightley seems more than up to the task of playing an ass-kicking babe, if only she had something interesting to do. A few supporting actors show some spark, especially Christopher Walken and Mo'Nique (seriously, Mo'Nique), but by the time the main characters have an unexpected acid trip the already senseless movie bottoms out and it's still a long way from over.

Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown unfortunately isn't that much better. I say this as a Cameron Crowe fan. I've liked all his movies. I even liked Vanilla Sky. But Elizabethtown just doesn't work.

There were quite a few moments when I couldn't even believe Crowe was responsible for what I was watching—usually during scenes where Kirsten Dunst babbles nonsensically about things like men seeing things in squares and women seeing things in circles or the mysteries of the phrase "that's what they say." She also says so-cute-you-want-to-strangle-her things like "I'm impossible to remember but hard to forget" and she does it all with a distracting and unnecessary in-and-out Southern accent.

Dunst may be annoying (this is a long way from her best grown-up screen work in Bring It On and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) but Orlando Bloom is a crushing bore in the central role. As scripted, his character, who loses his cushy job at a major shoe company and almost immediately finds out his father has died, comes off as Jerry Maguire Lite, and Bloom can't find a way to make the character worth watching.

There are two things going on at once in Elizabethtown but the promising one comes off like a distraction: Bloom's character travels to his father's hometown, where his dad was visiting at the time of his death. There he reconnects with his dad's (stereo)typically eccentric Southern family and feels miserable he didn't know his father better.

The storyline gets an extra boost from supporting actors (Paul Schneider, Judy Greer, Loudon Wainwright, Paula Deen) who deserved more screen time, and a little more consideration from Crowe. Where's the writer who made every supporting character count in Jerry Maguire? While we're on the topic, Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin are also in the movie, but they have roles they could play in their sleep and it shows. They're easy to watch but there's no spark, no surprise. (In all fairness Crowe originally wanted to cast Jane Fonda in Sarandon's role of Bloom's mother, which demonstrates that he still has some good instincts.)

Unfortunately, most of the movie is dedicated to the romance between Bloom and Dunst, which never takes off. In one of the film's most bizarre miscalculations their relationship blossoms over a very long cell phone conversation of which we only hear only random strands of chatter (most of it nonsensical, as mentioned above). Eventually they're drowned out altogether by a Ryan Adams song on the soundtrack (even Crowe's usually spot-on sense of music is off: there's simply too much and the selections never convey any meaning, it's the first Crowe movie I wouldn't even bother buying a soundtrack for).

Ok, so they talk for a long time, but what are they connecting over? Mutually lame philosophical notions I guess.

The movie's dull, over long and unspectacular cross-country road-trip finish speaks for itself.

All of this is really too bad since it's obvious Crowe is a filmmaker who actually cares about creating interesting characters and telling good (if sentimental) stories. Elizabethtown is supposed to be a feel-good crowd pleaser. But I suspect even many indiscriminating viewers will walk away bored.