Gwyneth gets on stage! - ‘Country Strong’ Review

Newsflash about Gwyneth Paltrow, ladies and gentleman, the girl can sing. And another news flash, Tim McGraw can act. I didn’t see either of those coming! Sadly their performances are wasted in a movie that really should have been better just by simple association with the people working on it. It’s a country song of a story in itself but if nothing else, Tim McGraw should have been consulted as a story analyst.

We all remember the little fiasco that took place with Faith Hill on McGraw’s record-breaking tour in 1996, right? Well, I didn’t remember it because Tim McGraw was a little outside my radar range back then, but I read a lot about it. Scandalous!

I'll let you look into that while I explain the story in the movie. Paltrow plays country singer Kelly Canter, who’s brought out of rehab early by her husband/manager, who quickly throws together a comeback tour for her. One drunken performance makes it immediately clear that taking her out of rehab wasn’t such a good idea, and so begins her husband’s mission to get back her previous star presence while at the same time preventing her from regressing back into a drunken country mess. 

The rest of the cast is easily confused with each other since they’re all designed to be basically mirror images of each other, so I’m gonna just list them for your convenience. Kelly’s the lead, just out of rehab and struggling to get back on her musical feet. Her husband James (Tim McGraw) is trying to get her back on stage and restore her tarnished fame, while a hot young singer named Beau (what else?), who she met in rehab, joins her in an effort to get her performing career going again.

The love triangle between Kelly and James and Beau is squared off with the talented young singer Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester, of “Gossip Girl” fame), who’s threatening to take the limelight away from Kelly. Throw in some partner swapping and a few flying vodka bottles and you have the makings for a genuine country song of a movie.

Unfortunately, the story relies too much on Gwyneth’s star power to push her character along. We never see her other than in her booze-addled haze for the first half of the movie, so it would be impossible to accept her as a major country superstar, or as the object of the affections of two good-looking guys. It’s particularly trying on the viewer to accept Beau as being as into Kelly as he is when all we’ve seen of her is a raging alcoholic. We can buy it because she’s Gwyneth Paltrow, but even with her considerable acting chops, she doesn’t quite capture that believability that Jeff Bridges pulled off in Crazy Heart. When he pulled up to that bowling alley at the beginning of that movie, you could almost feel the entire rise and fall of his career stretching out behind his beat up truck. Not so much in this movie.

It was written and directed by Shana Feste, who’s feature film debut was last year’s impressive The Greatest, with Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon, but this time I think she just plays up the drama just a little too much, which gives turns the movie into more of a downer than it should have been, given the many rousing musical numbers and impressive performances. It’s marketed on Paltrow’s singing performance, but it’s Garrett Hedlund (star of Tron: Legacy) who steals the show with his surprising talent. The man put an enormous amount of effort into doing his role right, and he definitely does it.

The Bean Meter