Country Strong

It seems like only yesterday that I was telling my wife about a movie that was being released in a few months. I had just gotten back from a screening, but the only memorable thing about it was the trailer for a new film, Country Strong. "It stars Gwyneth Paltrow as an alcoholic country singer," I told her, "which means either Sandra Bullock wasn't interested or Gwynnie thinks if she warbles a few sad songs to the common folk she might go home with another Oscar."

Now I know that my prediction was correct: Country Strong is country wrong.

Paltrow stars as Kelly Canter, a multi-platinum and Grammy award winning country singer who's at a rehab facility in Nashville. When we first meet her, she is being serenaded by an orderly named Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund), an aspiring musician who spends his nights playing clubs around town. Kelly's husband, James (Tim McGraw), pops in and announces that against everyone's advice he is signing her out a month early and putting her back on tour, which includes a stop in Dallas, where she was cited for drunk and disorderly behavior just before she entered rehab. To placate Kelly, James hires Beau as an opening act and "sponsor" for his wife, and a duet partner for his other new act, Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester).

That is the plot for the film, so please take your hats off and show some respect for the dead while I bury it. First allow me to make myself clear that I don't require a film to have likable characters or clear-cut heroes. That said, everyone in this movie is despicable. McGraw plays James as an homage to "The Colonel" Tom Parker, except that when he's not driving Kelly to drugs he seems to still love her a little. The two younger characters, Beau and Chiles, act so stupidly over the course of the film that I'm forced to conclude their lifelong dreams never actually meant that much to them. The only enjoyment I received from Paltrow's Kelly was how over the top she played it. Make no mistake, this is Paltrow's version of The Wrestler. Here she plays a piece of meat of a singer, beaten and broken by the bottle, but whereas Rourke had the scars from a lifetime of mistakes to carry the role, Paltrow relies on runny mascara to do the heavy lifting.

I can't blame the actors for the monstrosity that is Country Strong. Shana Feste, directing only her second film after the promising if uneven The Greatest, has managed to write a screenplay about the music industry that makes me wonder if she has ever read or heard anything about the business at all. True, most bar acts will throw a cover in here and there, but they're not going to impress a promoter by singing "Friends In Low Places." I get the feeling that if Ms. Feste had directed Crazy Heart, the soundtrack would have been nothing but Waylon and Willie songs. Also, most opening acts perform more than one song per night. I realize this is a movie and you have to turn your brain off sometimes, but by the end credits I was bordering on an aneurysm.

Needless to say I can't recommend this movie to anyone. I can't even say that it's a good bad movie, because it takes itself way too seriously to get any laughs. At the end of the day, Country Strong was a wasted effort on everyone's part, but will likely achieve immortality when it's shown on CMT eight times a week for eternity.

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Entertainment , Other posts by Isaac Weeks.

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film Country Strong

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