You had me at hello, then lost me all together in Elizabethtown

Just watched Elizabethtown and it sucked...SUCKED. Dundst your career is over. And that is from a former fan who has always enjoyed you, but now believes the snaggletooth bitch hype.

Anyhoo

I am so fucking pissed at one particular aspect of that film. I am not mad at something new. I am mad at something that has become an all to common occurrence in a number of recent films.

Movies like Elizabethtown have a key poignant moment where a speech, a letter, story or dialogue is so moving that it has one of two effects.

1-The dialogue forces all within earshot to stop what they are doing and listen so intensely that everything fades away.

or

2- The speech moves the speaker to tears, laughter and/or fits of rage.

How do we know they are so moved? Well we can see it right there on the screen. Unfortunately, the writer is no good enough to actually pen the emotional conversation, so the director covers it with some "meaningful" song as we watch the speech and reaction.

Case in point, Orlando Bloom (give me a break on the name) finally talks to his father, or the ashes on his father while on an out of the blue road trip. He cries, he yells, he laughs he bangs his fists. Why? Who the fuck knows. The writer (Cameron Crow) wasn't strong enough to spell it out. We are just supposed to assume there are underlying issue/feelings that are being dumped. Unfortunately the rest of the movie doesn't point to any of this so we are forced to listen to some enjoyable early Elton John while Bloom does little more than drive a Mercury Marquis across America banging his fist on the ceiling and his head of the steering wheel. Remember what I said about cool guy cars? Mercury Marquis is not one of them.

Another example that REALLY bothered me was from "Finding Forrester". This example really highlighted this growing problem to me. Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie, but in a movie of 2 great writers, Busta Ryhmes made the only well written speech. As for the other actors, well in the key scene Shawn Connery reads a letter form his young protégé in front of an assembly of students and teachers. Everyone hangs off of every word, time literally fucking stops. But again, save three sentences we hear nothing but some bullshit song while we watch people really listening. It must have been something. Again here is a case where nobody can actually write or speak in such a fashion to make the room stop. Sure something could be penned, but if the "theatre" audience doesn't respond then your sort of fucked. So they play a good song instead.

I assume the point is that the words are only important to the actors, it is the reaction that is important to us. Unfortunately, when you make a movie about a great writer and a conspiracy involving great writing, playing a song over said "great writing" is kind of weak.

Here is a comparable example. If you make the movie "Victory" without Pele actually punking the Germans in a soccer match, it just can't work. Crowd reaction is important, but if you don't show us some moves then why bother watching the film? A writing film without writing is pretty useless, in exactly the same way a baseball film is useless without the strikeout.

Taka a chance and write something you actually feel and don't worry about the audience. Guilty party Cameron Crow actually did this in Jerry McGuire twice. The mission statement and the you had me at hello speech. So if he can do it, don't cheat, or wimp out, just do it.