His decision to use a white rock group’s song in accompaniment with images of Martin Luther King Jr. continues to wash the South white, making the movie palatable for Crowe’s target audience.

Cameron Crowe is back and he has made a mix tape for your heart. “Elizabethtown” is a sweet, southern love story, strung together by a series of songs.

But it also sloppy and sappy, more so than Crowe’s previous work.

Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is a hotshot shoe designer for a large sneaker manufacturer (think Nike) located in Oregon. When Drew’s latest shoe design costs the company a billion dollars, he is fired.

At home, he contemplates killing himself. His cell phone rings. The tone on his phone is The Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next to You.” A phone call, one announced through music, saves Drew’s life.

The call is from his sister. Their dad has died. Drew must travel to Elizabethtown, Ky., and bring their father’s body back to Oregon.

Catching a redeye from Oregon to Kentucky, Drew finds himself alone — in coach. A talkative flight attendant named Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst) invites Drew up to first class.

Claire’s southern hospitality borders on grating. She is overly helpful and a wee-bit clingy. She is a fictitious woman and is the sort of girl every boy wants. She breaks the ice and does all the work.

Arriving in Elizabethtown, Drew realizes that the town’s residents are not ready to part with his dad’s body. Feeling alone and lost, Drew calls up Claire. They talk the night away.

For the rest of the film, Drew plays cat and mouse with Claire. She tells him she has a boyfriend, he tells her that he is more worried about the job he lost. She has to go to Hawaii, he has to sort out his father’s funeral.

Without a doubt, the two will get together. Until they do, Drew must deal with the colorful characters that inhabit Elizabethtown.

Cameron Crowe comes from Los Angeles. He is an outsider and his image of the South is pure nonsense. Tipping his hat to a few Southern novelties such as Ale-8-One (a Southern ginger ale) does not add authenticity to a depiction of Kentucky similar to that of “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

Drew’s goofy relatives add Southern color to the film, but there are few, if any, people of color in “Elizabethtown.” It is as if Crowe framed out any diversity. But Crowe takes his camera to Memphis, to the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He cues up U2’s “In the Name of Love” on the soundtrack.

These seemingly minor quibbles will not stop “Elizabethtown” from being a favorite with young lovestruck moviegoers. They do, however, point to a blind spot in Crowe’s vision of the world.

If asked, he would probably defend his films as being realistic, but in reality, there are black residents in Elizabethtown. His decision to use a white rock group’s song in accompaniment with images of Martin Luther King Jr. continues to wash the South white, making the movie palatable for Crowe’s target audience.

Most people who will go see the film will be white teenagers and early-20-somethings who still deal in mix tapes and road trips. There is little here for mature souls or diverse audiences.

What “Elizabethtown” offers is a perfect first-date movie for those too old to invite one another to a high school homecoming dance.

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