Home Sweet Home

I watched Elizabethtown last night, despite all the bad reviews, mostly because I'm stressed out and a smidge homesick. It was really pretty terrible - script, acting, plot, everything. I have to admit that I enjoyed Orlando Bloom's disorienting drive from the Louisville airport (that isn't the Louisville airport) to Elizabethtown. As he is leaving the airport he is acutally driving on I64 toward the airport into downtown. He passes several Louisville landmarks, goes through the tunnel between Louisville and Lexington, gets lost in Versailles and then miraculously finds that he is just outside of Elizabethtown. Eureka, indeed!

Prior to this excursion, Kirsten Dunst's character made a huge deal about her directions to E-town, warning Bloom repeatedly not to miss 60B. I'm still not sure what this is about. The only thing I can come up with is that the movie is trying to suggest that Kentucky connects its towns by gravel roads rather than interstates. This is also the first of several times Dunst tells Bloom an exit number. Who knows exit numbers?! Okay. I can think of one person. English is not his native language, though, and I suspect it was initially easier to learn the numbers rather than the street names. I have long considered this an eccentric talent. A parlor trick. "Hey, what exit number is Bardstown Road?"

I don't know the answer, but no doubt my friend and Kirsten Dunst would.

Also, Bloom stays at the Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville, even though the bulk of the action takes place in E-town. This is more than a little ridiculous. Not, however, as ridiculous as being told that Nashville is only 45 minutes from Louisville. What were these people thinking?

All of that said. I liked seeing Kentucky in its summertime green. The horse farms and beautiful stone fences in Versailles, the view of treetops and mist above the Kentucky River, the Ale81 shirt Orlando sports at the end of the film, it was all so familiar and so beloved, and I wonder if the bluegrass will always be the only place I truly call home.