Elizabethtown (film)

Elizabethtown is a 2005 American romantic tragicomedy film written and directed by Cameron Crowe starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. Alec Baldwin has a small role as a CEO of an athletic shoe company and Susan Sarandon appears as a grieving widow.

The movie is named for being set primarily in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It does not relate to the college of the same name that is located in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

Plot

Drew Baylor (Bloom) is an intelligent young man and designer for a shoe company. When his latest design, hyped to be a great accomplishment in his life, has a flaw that will cost the company $972 million to correct, Drew is shamed by his boss (Baldwin) and his coworkers before he is dismissed. Disappointed in his failure, and the subsequent breakup with his girlfriend Ellen (Jessica Biel), he plans an elaborate suicide by taping a butcher knife to an exercise bike, only to be stopped at the last moment by a tearful call from his sister Heather (Judy Greer) that his father died of a heart attack while visiting family in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Drew volunteers to retrieve the body, following a memorial service when his mother Hollie (Sarandon) refuses to go, following a dispute between her and the rest of the Kentucky Baylors, who consider them "Californian" despite the fact they were in California for a little over a year 27 years before, and instead live in Oregon.