There is always something a little embarrassing about a Cameron Crowe film, stemming mainly from the impression that he is trying too hard to ingratiate himself. Yet there is often something actually ingratiating as well, stemming paradoxically from how hard he tries. This one has plenty of both types of thing. It traces the personal odyssey of a corporate up-and-comer (Orlando Bloom, pretty well concealing his accent) whose design of a new athletic shoe called Späsmotica ("It was meant to approximate walking on a cloud") has been, for some unspecified reason, although the name alone seems reason enough, a total bust that will cost the company close to a billion dollars. His attempted suicide, before his folly hits the newsstands, gets interrupted by word of the untimely death of his father -- or timely death, from the suicide-prevention standpoint -- and by his obligation to retrieve the body from the Kentucky hometown where his father happened to have been visiting at the time. An almost maniacally helpful flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) is encountered on the way, and a legion of distant family and unknown friends awaits on arrival: "This loss will be met by a hurricane of love." The film indeed has a large population of sharply defined and differentiated characters, some of them embarrassing, some of them ingratiating, some of them both, and all of them generously given their fair chance or chances. It also has a wide range of types of material or topics of observation: the cutthroat corporate world and the welcoming small town, the big wedding party (strictly on the periphery) and the big funeral service, the cellphone culture and the cross-country road trip. And as always with Crowe -- whatever the balance of embarrassment and ingratiation -- there's the unavoidable snag of a limitless playlist of pop songs on the soundtrack. Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Bruce McGill. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
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