Drew's road trip continues in a montage of music, freeway, and brief sojourns at locations designated by Claire's voiceover. Such locations include Earnestine & Hazel's Sundry Store, where someone named Russ talks to Drew about the blues; the Lorraine Motel, site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination; the Survivor Tree, commemorating the victims of the Oklahoma City Bombing; and Dinosaur World.

Drew has several apparent conversations, alternately ending in tears and laughter, with the urn containing his father's remains. Throughout this journey, Drew scatters Mitch's ashes at significant points of interest and listens to Claire's mix CDs.

It is truly impossible to know how to approach this clip of Elizabethtown, as it contains almost no actual content. For over six minutes of runtime, the viewer continues being swept along on Drew's odyssey of self-discovery, inaugurated by what Claire deems in voiceover to be "the best chili in the world." Said chili is introduced with a POV shot of it being served and Drew taking a bite. There is, in fact, nothing to say about this.

Next, Orlando Bloom shows off his best impression of a human being engaged in delightful conversation with someone named Russ in a bar. As Claire instructs, "He's hung onto the place for 38 long years. He'll tell you a few stories." It is certainly unfortunate that Russ's stories are totally masked by the soundtrack blaring over him; perhaps Claire neglected to instruct Drew to pause the mix CD while listening to other people.

Drew's next stop reveals a bold direction for Claire's magical road trip: American history that has nothing to do with this movie. As Drew scatters a handful of Mitch's ashes at the Lorraine Hotel and beholds the museum exhibition of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s hotel room, the generous viewer will fill in the gaping blanks and determine that Mitch Baylor was probably the kind of guy who deeply cared about race relations in America. Drew's subsequent stop at Dinosaur World, however, reminds us that Mitch was definitely the kind of guy who would have appreciated being scattered in front of a large rubber dinosaur with a fish in its mouth.

With Claire's illuminating confession that the Survivor Tree is her "favorite tree in the world," we come to actually unlearn the pittance we knew about Claire already, as her Southern accent has completely evaporated over the course of her extensive voiceover in this clip. Without even this small clue as to Claire's origins, the sheer vacuum of any information about any character in the last two hours of Elizabethtown threatens to implode our television screen.

As instructed by Claire's map, Drew pulls over and dances by himself under a tree; although it is a terribly awkward performance, perhaps Drew should be commended, unlike his sociopathic mother, for at least saving his dance party until the only eyes watching him were ours.

Eventually, however, Claire's apparent madness reveals the carefully crafted method behind it. As Drew passes a sign reading "Welcome to Wichita," the truth suddenly becomes clear: the stale playlist, the arbitrary route, the irrelevant stops, the word-salad voiceover -- it all culminates in the moment when Drew's stultifying boredom finally cracks him. Unable to cope with Claire's lovingly orchestrated torture, Drew suddenly starts talking to his father, laughing and crying hysterically in what he is clearly experiencing as a two-way dialogue.

As it deals with any potentially human moment, of course, Elizabethtown drowns out the proceedings with soundtrack music (in this case an Elton John song already used earlier in the film). And while the grudging viewer might blame Cameron Crowe for the shortage of actual filmmaking in this film, we choose to offer Mr. Crowe our gratitude for sparing us the audio of whatever Orlando Bloom thinks he is doing in this scene. Indeed, the sharp embarrassment we feel for Bloom as he flops his arm around in response to another childhood flashback, this one demonstrating that Mitch sometimes pumped his arm up and down, is almost enough to make us cry with him.