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When we started this, we thought: Cameron Crowe must have directed...what? Twenty, thirty movies? He feels like a cultural force just shy of your Spielbergs and Lucasii and a tier above, say, Ron Howard and Ridley Scott. He's the John Hughes of the new millenium in impact, if not sensibility. Why, Cameron Crowe movies practically come with a TM after Crowe's last name. And he's done so many memorable ones. There's Say Anything..., with the famous stereo-in-the-rain scene. There's Jerry Maguire, showing us the money. There's... er, Almost Famous, which was almost good. There's Fast Times At Ridgemont High, which he actually wrote but didn't direct. There's Vanilla Sky, which...um...er...heh....
Actually, Cameron Crowe's directed only six movies. Six. And how many great movies has he directed? The answer's either one or none, and that depends on how much you like Jerry Maguire.
Cameron Crowe is good at catchphrases, at images, at memorable moments, but he's not that good at whole movies. We don't know about you, but we can't remember a single gall-dang thing from Say Anything except John Cusack with the stereo. (Wait -- there was a scene with John Mahoney...in a bathtub...we think.)
And what was Jerry Maguire, except two "Where's the beef?"-quality catchphrases and a whole lot of muddled plot? (She loves him. She leaves him. They get married. They split. They get back together. She leaves him? He catches a touchdown. The end.) And what was Almost Famous beyond being Kate Hudson's onscreen debutante debut? Vanilla Sky was well-intentioned but disastrous. Elizabethtown is, by most advance accounts, worse than that. That's two yeas and three nays, which means you've got to absolutely adore Singles just to put Cameron Crowe at .500.
What's odd about Crowe is how pervasive his influence is, or seems to be; there are so many movies that feel like they could have been directed by him (Serendipity comes to mind), mostly because lesser directors steal his actors and his tricks. Likable lead, comely lady, ol' time rock 'n' roll song for the trailer. All this bad-Xerox mimicry has made Crowe seem like the voice of a generation -- much as John Hughes once was. Yet in his own films, all Crowe can do is spout slogans; he's a voice with nothing to say.
At their core, Crowe's movies are distressingly anodyne: Be nice. Play fair. Walk wide-eyed into this world, and appreciate its wonder, especially when said wonder unfurls to a song by Elton John.
In fact, the most enjoyment we've gotten out of Cameron Crowe in years has nothing to do with him at all. It's that fake trailer for the fake movie Shining that's been circulating the internet for weeks. The most inspired moment in the fake trailer is the use of Peter Gabriel's "Salisbury Hill," so perfectly employed as the Pavlovian cue for all viewers to prepare their hearts for warming. This kind of Easy-Bake moment is exactly what Crowe's best known for, and best at: a moment that effectively cues you to feel something you remember having felt before, rather than inspiring an actual honest emotional response.
We really were shocked when we saw Crowe had directed just six films. We figured that, like John Hughes, he had dozens under his belt, which would one day be sortable into masterpieces (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club); solid B-sides (Sixteen Candles, Weird Science) and forgettable résumé padders (Uncle Buck, Curly Sue).
Then we realized Hughes only ever directed eight films. Eight. Which means Crowe still has two more chances to get this voice-of-a-generation thing right. All he has to do is figure out how to make three masterpieces in his next two films.
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