118 mins, Paramount Home Entertainment, Romance/Comedy/Drama, also available to buy. Starring: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer, Alec Baldwin, Bruce McGill, Jessica Biel, Paul Schneider.

WRITER-DIRECTOR Cameron Crowe pays tribute to the memory of his father with this life-affirming romantic comedy of chance encounters and unspoken truths that walks the tightrope between laughter and tears.

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.

Briefly considering suicide, Drew is shaken out of his fug by terrible news that his father has died.

Following a trip home to be with his deranged mother Hollie (Sarandon) and sister Heather (Greer), and share in their grief, Drew travels onwards to Elizabethtown in sunny Kentucky to represent the family at his father's funeral.

En route, he falls in love with a pretty flight attendant, Claire (Dunst), whose optimistic outlook on life gives Drew a reason to go on.

Confection

Elizabethtown is an enjoyably sweet yet slight confection. Crowe's screenplay is littered with smart, snappy dialogue, which characters deliver with such enviable regularity and ease.

Some of the one-liners feel clumsy, though: Claire's tearful declaration, "I'm going to miss your lips, and everything attached to them," teeters on the verge of unintentional hilarity.

Bloom delivers a credible performance, complete with American accent, but his big emotional scenes late in the film 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 the 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.

DVD Extras: Training Wheels featurette, extended scenes, Meet The Crew featurette, photo gallery, theatrical trailers.