'Elizabethtown' has a big heart

One of the characteristics that endears writer/director Cameron Crowe to moviegoers is his willingness to risk looking like a fool in his attempt to put real human warmth on screen. He'll stand holding a jam box outside your window at dawn. He'll give his characters Frank Capra speeches. And he'll make a movie like "Elizabethtown," which flirts with laughability at every turn yet trusts that you are open-hearted enough to embrace it.

Paramount Pictures 'Elizabethtown' 3 out of 5 stars Director: Cameron Crowe Starring: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Biel, Judy Greer Run time: 133 minutes Release date: Oct. 14, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for language and some sexual references. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Elizabethtown'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

You can't say Crowe doesn't practice what he preaches. The tale's main theme is that those who would lead meaningful lives must take the kind of leaps of faith that sometimes end in disaster. Orlando Bloom's Drew Baylor has just made such a leap and landed on his belly: He has designed a new high-tech sneaker that is such a failure it threatens to bankrupt a Nike-sized corporation. (This is the first of the plot's many highly implausible underpinnings.)

Baylor is moments away from committing suicide when his phone rings: His father has died while visiting relatives in Kentucky, and Drew (if they only knew!) is the only one up to the emotional task of going to retrieve the body.

Believing that he is simply postponing his own hara-kiri, Drew flies out to Elizabethtown, where he meets the kind of hug-giving, pie-baking folks that a West Coast urbanite might fear. He also meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a flight attendant and ready-made emotional guru who is less a romantic interest than deus ex machina: Sure, she will eventually wind up in Drew's arms, but only after tending to needs that even he doesn't know he has.

Space won't allow a thorough accounting of the flaws in "Elizabethtown" (casting Bloom, for instance, who is still not ready for leading roles, even if his years as an elf did leave him with a useful knack for making puppy-dog eyes); suffice it to say they are many. Still, viewers who make an effort to remain open (and those of us inclined to give Crowe the benefit of the doubt) might be surprised to find how little these flaws count against the film's charms.

The film's enormous heart — displayed, for example, in Crowe's use of his favorite emotional pop songs (Elton John, Tom Petty, for example; he even cast singers like Patty Griffin and Loudon Wainwright III for onscreen roles.) even when they work against our attempts to lose ourselves in the story — might win you over. Its humor, which ranges from gentle character observation to left-field quirkiness (a home-improvement video with magic child-calming properties, a "Free Bird" gone disastrously wrong), will almost certainly make some questionable bits easier to swallow.

Above all, you might be carried away by Crowe's and the film's belief in the transformative power of grand, foolish gestures. Of all the director's movies, this one is the most vocal in that belief — and perhaps the one with the most to gain from convincing audiences it is true.