Elizabethtown

According to countless newspaper and magazine articles, 21st-Century metrosexual men are supposed to be far more in touch with their emotions and better equipped to express them.

Writer-director Cameron Crowe begs to differ. Since his very first film, the iconic romantic comedy Say Anything, Crowe has laid bare the inadequacies and insecurities of the hairier sex.

In 2000, he turned to more autobiographical fare with Almost Famous, a Valentine to his mother, and now in Elizabethtown, he pays tribute to the memory of his father.

Like his previous work, this is a lifeaffirming romantic comedy of chance encounters and unspoken truths which walks the tightrope between laughter and tears, schmaltz and heartfelt emotion.

Drew Baylor (Bloom) is a talented young shoe designer, whose fortunes go into freefall when his design for a revolutionary training shoe almost sends his employers bankrupt.

Sacked by his boss (Baldwin), Drew briefly contemplates suicide (by exercise bike), only to be shaken out of his fug by the terrible news his father has died.

Having met with his mother Hollie (Sarandon) and sister Heather (Greer), and shared in their grief, Drew travels to Elizabethtown for his father's funeral.

En route, he meets and falls under the spell of pretty flight attendant Claire (Dunst), who boasts "I'm hard to remember but I'm impossible to forget."

Her optimistic outlook on life gives Drew a reason to go on.

When Elizabethtown debuted in a rough cut at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, it was 18 minutes longer and, by all accounts, unfocused and emotionally unsatisfying.

I can only judge Crowe's final edit, which runs to a whisker over two hours, and is an enjoyably sweet yet slight confection.

His screenplay is littered with smart, snappy dialogue - "You're always trying to break up with me and we're not even together!" - which the characters deliver with such enviable regularity and ease.

But some of the one-liners feel clumsy. Claire's tearful declaration, "I'm going to miss your lips and everything attached to them," teeters on the verge of unintentional hilarity. Perhaps there is hope for us tongue-tied, stuttering fools after all.

Elizabethtown is notable as Bloom's first attempt at an American accent - he delivers a credible performance but his big emotional scenes late in the film, when Drew's pent-up grief finally floods out, don't ring entirely true.

Dunst is positively luminous - we fall in love with her air stewardess from her very first word.

Sarandon plays her widow for laughs, including a notorious tap-dancing scene that has to be seen to be believed (and sniggered at).

The music, which so often defines Crowe's films, is a dazzling array of old and new, running the gamut of The Hollies, Tom Petty, Elton John and Ryan Adams.

Elizabethtown rocks, on the soundtrack at least.