Sneak peek: Cameron Crowe's 'Elizabethtown'

My initial reaction after watching a seven-and-a-half-minute teaser from Cameron Crowe’s fall film, Elizabethtown? Huh.

Except for the funeral sequence at the beginning, it’s a mostly dialogue-free montage of seemingly random moments from the film, all accompanied by Elton John’s lovely (and politically incorrect) roots-rock ballad ”My Father’s Gun”. The clip is full of Crowe’s patented wistful quirk, capped by what appears to be the movie’s set piece: a banquet scene in which a wooden bird gliding on a ceiling-mounted track catches fire and everyone gets drenched by the sprinklers.

Not that anyone expects a trailer to have any more narrative coherence than, say, Vanilla Sky, but still, this one cries out for a voiceover by the ”In a world…” guy. On the plus side, Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst make a preternaturally cute couple. And Crowe writes famously sharp dialogue; maybe some time soon, he’ll let us hear some.