Elizabeth The Worst

From Almost Famous to almost unwatchable, who'd have thought Cameron Crowe could fall so far?

As November rolls around, film critics with a penchant for lists begin to mull over the high and low points of the year. My top treats of 2005 so far include Paul Haggis' Crash (given an unfairly rough ride by some sniffy UK critics), and David Cronenberg's A History Of Violence (which should have won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, but - naturally - didn't). Contenders for King Of The Trash Heap include Guy Ritchie's Revolver (which proves that the kabbalah cult saps not only your money but your mind), Gus Van Sant's Last Days (a film about suicide which made me lose the will to live) and now, in an unexpected last minute entry, Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown.

Terrifyingly described in the press notes as 'a uniquely crafted comedy in the key of life', Elizabethtown is a melancholic rom-com about a young man (Orlando Bloom) who falls in love with an irrepressibly upbeat air hostess (Kirsten Dunst) in the wake of his dad's untimely death. According to writer-director Crowe, for whom this has a vaguely autobiographical tinge, the film asks the question, "How do you say goodbye to someone you've barely said hello to?" The only questions racing through my mind, however, were: how did the man behind Say Anything... and Almost Famous make a film this unbearably ghastly?, and how can I get out of the cinema REALLY FAST?

Next page • "The temptation, of course, is to blame Tom Cruise"