I would like to paint you a pretty picture about Country Strong being a movie with good writing, and good acting, and especially songs I like…but I just can’t. I feel like I have a responsibility to you, the reader, as a reviewer. Nay! I’m more like the king’s god damned food taster and I’m constantly being thrown POISON!
Remember back when I reviewed Crazy Heart? I do. I didn’t appreciate seeing Jeff Bridges drunk and singing country and making out with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Well, maybe I was heard…maybe I made a difference. Tobey Macguire read my blog and said “I will write a movie just like Crazy Heart but will cast more attractive people!”
Well, let me just say to you Spiderman…DON’T DO ME ANY MORE FAVORS!
Country Strong is about Beau (Garrett Tronlund). He is a country singer by night, and a rehab murse by day. Guess who is in rehab when the film opens? Six time Grammy-winning country superstar Kelly Canter (Gweneth Paltrow) and she does what I imagine most celebrities do while they’re in rehab…sit in their underpants. She’s teaching Beau a thing or two when her husband (Tim Mcgraw) barges in and announces that the comeback tour begins now! Uh Oh! She still has a month a rehab left…who cares? Apparently, she does have a lot of problems left. Mainly, she can’t sing unless her husband loves her and that doesn’t happen unless she’s onstage singing! All the rest of time is spent worrying about how well her openers are doing. As it turns out, people love opening acts Beau (previously mentioned) and Chiles Stanton (played by Leighton Meester). She’s the next Carrie Underwood! It’s all very country soap opera from there. Everyone is pretty much sleeping with everyone else and the people they aren’t sleeping with are busy looking glum. They sing a lot?
To its credit, the songs aren’t half bad…some of them. I’m of the opinion that country songs have the best lyrics, but they’re also the easiest to mess up. So it’s a constant battle of hearing bad renditions of country karaoke or hearing country at all. I’m a fan of old country. This movie drops a lot of well-known names like Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard and Wayland Jennings (those are the only names, besides the aforementioned Ms. Underwood) but it doesn’t behave like homage. More like the names were thrown in because they’re well-known.
Gweneth Paltrow masters the far-away look and the pleather pant look here (in fact, the budget had FAR too much money set aside for pleather clothing). She and fellow co-star Garrett Hedlund both do nothing but look next to tears. Speaking of Tron Jr, he is looking weird! From his veiny neck to his patchy wolverine beard to his….oh god….MOLE! Weird-shaped-birth-mark-right-there-on-your-neck MOLE! Just try to not look at it the entire film! The movie’s main downfall is that you don’t rally for any of the characters. You couldn’t feel sorry for Kelly because none of the other characters stayed with her to help her. I didn’t care about the union between Beau and Chiles because it was tainted with Beau’s fickle decisions. No one was a good person. It was over two hours of wishing that this movie had different people in it altogether and it didn’t matter how these people ended up.
In summation…the only good thing about Country Strong was the ending, but then it went way beyond that! There was a good ending (the only one that made sense) and then the movie lasted another 15 minutes.
Country Strong gets a long, blabbery review and 4 out of 10 x o x o -Gossip Girls