MOVIE REVIEW - Country Strong

Sometimes the quality a movie has everything to do with the writer and director and almost nothing to do with the actors or anything else involved.

That is this weeks new country music movie, Country Strong with Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw starring. This project was written and directed by Shana Feste who has made a few pics and is considered an up and coming film maker. To be fair, and a bit kind, this project is all hers, and a smarter decision at the studio level could have been made to never have gotten this off the ground.

CS is the fictional story of a middle aged drunken country singer, Kelly Cantor (Paltrow) and her husband manager (McGraw). The Kelly character is loosley based on Brittany Spears according to the writer. She is a bit past her prime after being firmly on top. She goes to rehab, but leaves early to go on an ill-advised concert tour with two new young talents, one of which she is sleeping with. She of course is not recovered in any way, and goes on a series of self-destructive antics, that damage her further and drag down everyone around her. It all culminates in a predictable fashion. With a very odd plot twist at the end that doesn't make it better.

CS has a few problems that are hard to overcome. Walk The Line from 2007, and Crazy Heart from 2009. And there are more very good country music movies over the years that have won Oscars, and been highly heralded. Trouble is this formula has nothing new to offer at all. The actors have no chance here, as this is poorly written, poorly directed, very awkward at times, and the story is just flat out not good or original. All of our stars Paltrow, McGraw, Garrett Hedlund, and Leighton Meester are completely helpless to make this a winner. Victims of a very poor script and worse direction. Hard to be harsh on the performaces so I won't. No one had a chance here.

Nashville holds up its end as some of the original songs are nice, and the stars doing their own singing should be applauded. That is a huge challenge when making these kind of flicks and Paltrow, Meester and Hedlund pull it off well. There were some nice moments on the stages of the honky-tonks that were the movies best scenes by far, where some rather intimate performances took place. CS is kind of two movies. The music part which is pretty good, then the movie and story part which doesn't work at all.

An observation too. With this being a fictional piece, you really don't care about the characters in this movie. This is the key missing element. Although Crazy Heart was fiction too, the script was light years superior and Jeff Bridges with his highly developed and wonderful character Bad Blake, and his Oscar performance was the separator. Blake was relateable, had depth, and you always wanted to know more about him. That tangible and necessary element is sorely missing from our lead character in CS. Plus, the original music in Crazy Heart was off the charts fantastic, maybe as good as any original soundtrack in recent memory.

You can lay this all on the movie makers, and studios and not the actors. Music good. The idea that this was going to hit the bulls-eye critically was naive. Put this squarely on maker and writer. This overall just doesn't work.