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Originally Posted by Tcup4jdh  My turn. Rubbing hands together.... Elizabethtown is one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite Orlando movies. His voice sounded weird to me... at first. There were only a couple of times where I thought the american accent wasn't quite crisp. But the next time I watched the movie, I did it with headphones so that I could really hear his voice and the accent. It worked for me. I thought he did a good job with it and a great job with the role. I don't think he is not good in comtemporary roles. I think we as the audience, as the critics, as whatever have narrowed our views of him. That's not fair to him or any other actor. I thought those reviews were unfair and based on the reception the movie got in Cannes. I thought that was the wrong place for it to screen anyway.
I don't know where everyone else is from but Elizabethtown is a definitive American movie; a definitive Southern American movie. The intimacy of the subject matter... Or better, the intimacy of the environment the subject matter was placed in doesn't always transfer universally, even though the subject matter is universal.
Also, IMO, the movie was described and marketed wrong. Romantic comedy is wrong and simplistic. Yes he did fall in love but I don't think that is the main focus of the movie. It's about a man on the very edge, at the end. With everything he has going on, he then has to deal with the death of his father and come to terms about the relationship with his father that he never had and will never have. He breaks my heart thoughout this entire movie, even up until the end. I could talk about the movie all day. I so love it. :under the way too much info category probably: When I need some alone absolute quiet time, I put this movie on at about 3 in the morning. Even though I cry a lot, I always feel better. |
Okay, before I start I just want to say that these are
my opinions and thoughts about the whole thing.
My views on Orlando's acting have nothing to do with what the movie is about. I'm not American, nor do I have any family from the South (or any other part of the US, for that matter), and yet his Southern family didn't seem unbelievable to me. The movie didn't flop because the subject matter doesn't transfer universally, I think that's a rather shallow argument. In the end the movie is about loss, and we all deal with loss in our own way. And every culture is familiar with loss, so this should transfer even though there are cultural differences in the world. What I'm saying is that I hardly think the tough criticism of the movie had anything to do with the Southern family. If you (who are familiar with the South) think this movie might be hard to understand for the rest of the world, then maybe the story just isn't good enough. I'm sure Cameron Crowe would like a wider audience than that.
With that being said, I don't think Orlando was as bad as many critics seem to think. If he was that bad then whoever did the casting made a horrible mistake by casting him at all. I don't think that is the case. The thing is, when you are set out to be the leading man for any movie, there's going to be a lot of pressure. So much of the story is on your shoulders, not to mention the storytelling. Orlando has shown that he can be a leading man in the Calcium Kid, but to be honest, I don't think those two movies can be compared. But he just couldn't handle this one. It's kinda sad that the best scenes in Elizabethtown were the scenes where he was just on screen, not saying anything. Maybe it was too much for him to handle? Maybe it's the genre? All I know is the accent made it even less believable to me. Sure, we probably have narrowed our opinions. He seems to have become one of those actors people love to hate. But even if you try to be impartial when watching this movie, his appearance was not very strong. I usually don't think Kirsten Dunst is a very good actress, but she was miles ahead of him in this movie.