 There was a time when Cameron Crowe could do no wrong by critics. Films like his 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1989's Say Anything, 1996's Jerry Maguire and 2000's Almost Famous received near universal praise. But 2001's Vanilla Sky received mixed reviews, although it grossed more than $100 million, and his current film, Elizabethtown, is being almost universally drubbed. In the words of the Washington Post's Desson Thomson: "Writer-director Cameron Crowe's most recent stumble, Vanilla Sky, continues without interruption into Elizabethtown." New York Daily News critic Jack Mathews calls it "as big a misfire as any major director has had in years." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post observes that there's a line in the film in which a character remarks, "There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco." Comments Lumenick: The line "practically begs audiences to decide which label applies to Cameron Crowe's rambling, schmaltzy romantic comedy." Nevertheless, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times concludes that the movie "is nowhere near one of Crowe's great films ... but it is sweet and good-hearted and has some real laughs." |
