YMMV / Elizabethtown

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Roger Ebert published a reader letter that puts forward the theory that Claire is an angel sent to save Drew from self-destruction, who chooses to leave Heaven to stay on Earth with him.
• Awesome Music: It's a Cameron Crowe movie.
  • "My Father's Gun" by Elton John, which plays after Drew's botched suicide attempt, as well as in the middle of his road trip.
  • "This Time Around" by IO, when Drew reminisces about his father before setting out for Elizabethtown.
  • Ruckus's rendition of "Freebird" at Mitch's memorial service. Not even a raging fire with the sprinklers at full-blast stops the band from Epic Rocking.
  • Most of the songs on Claire's mix CD's.
• Creator Killer: The film is often blamed for ending Orlando Bloom's run as an A-list Hollywood leading man; despite being one of the most iconic actors of the 2000s thanks to his performances as Legolas, Will Turner, and Paris, most critics reacted negatively to his lead role in Elizabethtown—a purely dramatic film that mostly required him to carry the emotional weight of the story by himself (without Viggo Mortensen, Johnny Depp, or Eric Bana backing him up). He's mostly appeared in smaller films (or supporting roles) since then.
• Critical Dissonance: Only has a 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it's well-loved by fans, despite the box office failure.
• Franchise Original Sin: According to Nathan Rabin, the films of Cameron Crowe (such has Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire) have the exact same issues as Elizabethtown (Nothing but Hits soundtrack, character that undergoes great disaster and spends the rest of the movie finding himself, etc), but this is the movie in which it really hit overkill levels of glurge (Rabin's analysis' title, "The Bataan Death March of Whimsy", says it all) and audiences finally felt that Crowe's Signature Style was saccharine.
• One-Scene Wonder: Alec Baldwin as Drew's boss Phil who can't seem to decide if he wants to make Drew feel better or worse about his failure.
• Vindicated by History: It bombed upon release and was massacred by critics who saw it as overdoing it on Crowe's quirks but has developed a bit of a cult following in the years since among fans who liked it for it's earnestness and positive vibes. Notably, Nathan Rabin, once one of the film's harshest critics and who even began his habit of reviewing films which bombed in response that would go on to define his career, had a more positive take the second time he watched it and grew to genuinely like the film later on.

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