Country Strong Review: Country Music Lovers will be Impressed

Ok. So let’s get one thing straight. It is impossible to walk out of the theater after seeing Country Strong without being 100% in love with Garrett Hedlund. Even his awkward middle-gap mustache can’t keep me from developing a rather intense crush. In fact, from the moment the film opens and we hear his silky voice, I could hear most of the women in the theater swooning. Add his southern accent and bright blue eyes and it’s over. You’re defenseless.

I went into Country Strong expecting a rather predictable comeback story, perfectly crafted to launch the music careers of its stars. And to some extent, the film doesn’t manage to fully escape elements of a predictable melodrama. However, Country Strong also manages to be surprisingly honest, intriguing, and heartbreaking. Maybe I should have guessed that a movie about an alcoholic country singer would be sad, since country music is notoriously melancholy, but I didn’t and was more than pleasantly surprised.

Country Strong centers on disgraced country music singer, Kelly Cantor (Gwyneth Paltrow), as she tries to make her comeback after battling an addition to alcohol that caused her to miscarry her baby. Cantor leaves rehab, where she met small town country crooner Beau (Hedlund), as the film opens. She embarks on a comeback tour at the urging of her husband/manager (Tim McGraw) and brings Beau along to open. It quickly becomes clear that neither Cantor nor her husband have sufficiently healed from the pain of losing their child, and Kelly’s first two performances end in alcohol-induced disaster.

Meanwhile, Kelly’s husband begins investing much of his time in the career of beauty queen ingénue Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester), further threatening Cantor’s career, marriage, and sobriety. A drama of accusation, guilt, romance, and heartache unfolds, punctuated by emotional musical performances.

I learned a few things from Country Strong. First, even mediocre dialogue sounds romantic and inspired when spoken in a southern accent. Second, I actually like country music. Third, Gwyneth Paltrow can SING. Girl’s got talent. Actually, the acting and singing talent of the entire cast saves this movie from becoming an overly dramatic mess. Each of the leads sing all of their own parts, and surprisingly, I didn’t hate it. Even Gossip Girl Leighton Meester makes up for her slightly overdone southern accent by being incredibly impressive on stage. In fact, the most frustrating thing about the whole film was that it kept abruptly cutting away from on-stage performances just as they were getting good.

The scenes in between performances just couldn’t compare. On one hand, the characters were all interesting and their stories compelling. More than once I felt tears welling as the flawed characters struggled to find their footing in Kelly’s unstable world. On the other hand, a major problem with Country Strong is that it expects you to fill in the gaps of the story line on your own. We’re expected to piece bits of information together through guesswork, aided only by the multitude of meaningful looks the cast gives each other and the camera almost every five seconds. It’s tough to get a handle on the intricacies of the characters’ relationships because very little time or energy is spent explaining their stories. Perhaps this make the characters feel more complicated and their relationships more intense and messy, but mostly I think it just made them unclear.

Despite these problems, I left the theater feeling like I got my money’s worth, and I thoroughly recommend the film. Country music lovers will be impressed by the music and cast (although it’s a bit of a travesty that Tim McGraw doesn’t sing at all in a movie about country music). Country music haters might be less impressed, but will still enjoy the ferocity of acting and emotional story. If the music and acting don’t entice you, I think we can all agree that spending two hours with the eye candy that is Garrett Hedlund is well worth the price of admission.

Photo by Scott Garfield courtesy Screen Gems