Country Strong (2010)

I had eagerly anticipated this and the music was great--Gwyneth Paltrow and Garrett Hedlund are good singers!--but I was ultimately disappointed in the tale of a dissolute country star, her cold husband/manager, her warm guy friend/muse, and her naive young rival. Perhaps director/writer Shana Feste needs more experience (this is her second feature and I didn't see her first, The Greatest (2009)), or maybe my expectations were just too high. One example of my complaints: I found no scripted explanation for the withholding attitude of the husband James, played by country star Tim McGraw (a brother in Four Christmases and the husband in The Blind Side, among others) in a non-singing part. Leighton Meester's (I've never seen Gossip Girl) cotton-candy character Chiles just plain annoyed me, both in the beginning when she was supposed to, as well as later when we were supposed to like her. I usually like Paltrow (I picked my favorites in Iron Man 2, and later enjoyed her singing in Glee) but here, as Kitty Kanter, she keeps crying and crying--enough already. Hedlund (played one of the Four Brothers (2005) with Mark Wahlberg, and more) is handsome and engaging as Beau, but his character just changes with no real explanation.

Although country music is seldom my first choice of genre, I like it a lot when it's done well, and whenever Paltrow is behind the mic the movie picks up considerably. Same for Hedlund, whose rich low notes should have been used more (as in his first song, Chances Are). Original music by Michael Brook (co-composer of Into the Wild (2007) with Eddie Vedder and Kaki King, solo composer on An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Sugar, The Fighter, and more) adds extra spice. For music clips, go to this blog post (if you don't want spoilers, don't read the list, just click on the videos) which lists 39 tracks. Imdb has 38 (the missing one is If You See Me Getting Smaller by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson) but more detail about each one. Two of the songs have been nominated for awards, Coming Home and Country Strong.

Jack was pleased to see the scenes set in Austin (which he visited often when his daughter lived there), with touches such as Lone Star beer, "the national beer of Texas," in one bar, but we noticed later that the movie was shot entirely in Tennessee.

We didn't check the rottentomatoes tomatometer before we saw this, but I looked during the movie. It was at 17% approval for critics. It has now soared to 19%, making it the fourth worst reviewed movie on the list today. Audiences are giving it an average of 49. My suggestion: wait for it to be free on network or cable, then record it on your DVR, fast forward through the tears and tantrums, and watch the rest.