As was made evident in his entertaining 1996 film Jerry Maguire, writer-director Cameron Crowe is fascinated with how success and failure are measured. The protagonist of his latest, a moribund romantic dramedy entitled Elizabethtown, picks up the theme early on by reflecting on the difference between authoring a mere failure and being responsible for a total fiasco.

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is suicidal after getting fired for designing a piece of athletic footware that will end up costing his employer, Mercury Shoes, 972 million dollars. On the heels of this professional disaster, which devoured eight years of his life and causes his colleague and sometime girlfriend (Jessica Biel) to dump him, Drew learns his father has suddenly died.

With his confidence it tatters, he travels to his dad's birthplace Elizabethtown, Kentucky to make arrangements. Turns out pops -- a West Point grad who collapsed while paying a visit to his hometown -- was a great success insofar as he was extremely popular with his extended family and the locals. Aided by Claire (Kirsten Dunst), the irrepressible flight attendant he meets en route, Drew commences a long journey toward his own vague definition of success.

Because Crowe's intentions are appealing and his sense of humor never syrupy, Elizabethtown is a failure but not a fiasco. As the former music journalist showed in his sweet, semi-autobiographical film Almost Famous, he's intimately familiar with rock 'n roll; and although he uses that knowledge shamelessly, the soundtrack also helps steer this movie away from complete ruin.

Yet for a director with such a keen ear for music, Crowe cannot come to terms with the structure of Elizabethtown.  Even after (and no doubt partly because) he cut out big chunks of the movie in response to festival audience reactions, this meandering, often random work never coalesces. Either he never knew what he wanted to say or couldn't choose between his minor and major motifs. The haphazardness and lackadaisical charm is initially a virtue, but by the time Claire sends Drew on a road trip through the Heartland, it's gotten tedious and annoying.

To use a food metaphor, Elizabethtown is like a crumbly biscuit. If it stayed together, it might very well be tasty and satisfying. Soon after you pick it up, however, it's scattered all over the table. The only response is to sweep the crumbs away with your forearm. Some have to do with fathers and sons -- coping with your legacy and living up to expectations. Many bits are of the Pepperidge Farm variety, celebrating small-town life and wholesome American values. And the rest of Elizabethtown's pieces have a carpe diem flavor, as the romance between two so-called "substitute people" implies that just being able to savor life makes you a success.

The parts don't cohere, but flaccid writing mars them individually. For example, an ongoing joke about Drew's Kentucky kinfolk confusing California and Oregon isn't funny. No mood or feeling gets clearly established and therefore none can be sustained.

Drew and Claire are nebulous characters unable to give the picture an energizing center. And if the parts are too flaky, the romance won't congeal. Like everything else, their relationship unfolds in fits and starts. The valiant actors aren't to blame. Tempting as it may be to assume Bloom is miscast, the Englishman puts on a believable accent. The character just isn't there. Claire is self-consciously wacky, spouting what on first and final impression sound like non-sequiturs. She forgoes a trip to Hawaii to take Drew shopping for urns. It's as if Crowe wanted to channel Ruth Gordon's elderly free spirit from Harold and Maude. When Claire identifies Drew and herself as "substitute people", presumably Crowe means they have to make their own place and write their own rules since they don't belong anywhere or with anyone in particular.

SPOILER ALERT

No one belongs at the memorial service for Drew's father, where Crowe's use of the rock anthem "Free Bird" is obvious but hard to resist -- until fire breaks out in the hall sending everyone running. Drew's widowed mom, played by an obviously uncomfortable Susan Sarandon, delivers a eulogy that includes tap dancing to "Moon River."

Earlier, Drew opines that "Success is the only god the whole world serves." This most general of observations, meant to pass as epigrammatic wisdom, is one example of why Cameron Crowe shouldn't bank on Elizabethtown being a success. 

(Released by Paramount Pictures and rated "PG-13" for language and some sexual material.)