"Do you ever feel like you're just fooling everybody?" That is the question posed by Kirsten Dunst's character in Cameron Crowe's new flick, "Elizabethtown."

The film opens with Drew (Orlando Bloom), a shoe designer considering suicide after his boss (Alec Baldwin) informs him that he has just cost the company nearly a billion dollars with his most recent design, "a failure of mythic proportions."

Drew is a failure, but his suicide plans are put on hold after a call from his sister relays the bad news: his father has died while visiting family in Kentucky. Drew must retrieve his father's body and represent his family to the relatives at the memorial service. On his red-eye to Kentucky he meets Claire (Dunst) a quirky flight attendant who refuses to stop chatting with him as she is the only flight attendant and he is the only passenger on board.

Once in Kentucky, Drew is faced with the family his father left behind, most of whom he has never met before. He learns a lot about his family in his time with them, and through their eyes, gets to see his father from a different perspective.

During his stay, Drew calls Claire in a moment of loneliness. What results is an all-night phone call that ends when they meet to watch the sun rise. Throughout the film, Claire does her best to make Drew fall in love with her. She pops up without notice and is shameless in her attempts at getting his attention. Despite her compulsiveness, though, Claire is likable. She wears her heart on her sleeve and you have to respect someone who knows what they want and goes for it, regardless of potential failure and embarrassment. She teaches Drew to put his failure into perspective, and eventually gives him the tools to say goodbye to his father.

The film's crescendo comes in the form of a road trip. Drew will make the trip he and his father always planned to take. Claire supplies Drew with a unique gift for his pilgrimage that includes road maps, cds, and photos that all correspond to a precise timeline for his journey. She believes she knows what it will take for Drew to grieve. Her gift may be presumptuous, except that she is right. The journey itself, along with the rest of the film is set to the kind of music that is Crowe's signature. The melodies of Tom Petty, Patty Griffin, Elton John, Ryan Adams, and My Morning Jacket act as the foundation for "Elizabethtown."

Crowe has said that this is his most personal film since "Almost Famous," as he began writing it after the death of his own father. For the audience who loves Crowe's prior films, "Elizabethtown" doesn't reach the epic heights of "Almost Famous," but is certainly not a disappointment. This movie has Crowe's name stamped all over it, and I mean that in a good way. I laughed and I cried, but I mostly laughed, and in the end it made me want to take a road-trip with just the right music on an open road. As my friend Kristine says, "It's worth the eight bucks you'll pay to see it."

(4 and 1/2 stars)

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