Country Strong (2011)

On the cover of the DVD for Country Strong, it has a quote, saying “You don’t have to be a country fan to love this movie.” I have not bothered to look up who wrote this quote, as I just flat-out do not agree with it. Personally, I am not a country music fan, despite the fact that I come from the land of Tennessee. So I am not a country fan. And I REALLY do not love this movie. In fact, at times, I don’t even like this movie. It’s just kind of dull. There are stretches filled with cheesy drama scenes that do not work at all. They are unconvincing, unmoving, and just plain terrible. There are a lot of reasons why Country Strong is a bad movie. Shall we delve into these reasons? We shall. For starters, the movie has Tim McGraw in it, and he can’t act to save his life. He just stands there, tries to look concerned, and sometimes says something unconvincingly. If it were up to me, I would just have written his character out of the film completely. I just hate this character, and I hate this actor. So now, I hate Tim McGraw. I don’t listen to country, so I can’t vouch for him as a musician, but if he’s good, he needs to stay there. Even if he’s bad, he just needs to stop being in movies, because he is terrible. But now moving on to people I do not hate, the star of the movie is Gwyneth Paltrow. She is not bad in this movie, not bad at all, but she’s not good either. She just seems average for this role. I do believe that she is a very good actress and a very good singer, it’s just that it seems like this was a contract film for her. I’m assuming that the deal was-“Okay, Gwyneth, we’ll let you do Glee, but then you have to do this country movie.” “Fine.” Now, that’s just my assumption. More than not, when I say something, it’s just my silly opinion. My silly little opinion. But, you’re reading this right now, so I assume that my silly little opinion matters to someone. So, thank you. Now let’s leave my sentimental thank-you and talk about this little slice of trash. The plotline for Country Strong concerns an alcoholic country music star Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is on her recovery tour after her blood alcohol level on stage on night both ruined the show and made her have a miscarriage. So she goes to rehab, her helper (Garret Hedlund) also being a country singer, and having an affair with Kelly. So on Kelly’s comeback tour, her rehab helper and a young singer (Leighton Meester) both are the opening act. Now, Hedlund and Meester are, for me at least, the best actors in the film. They both know that their characters aren’t written very well, but they do their best anyway. Honestly, it took me a while to see that their characters are badly written, the performances were so good. But the characters are badly written. In fact, the entire script is the weak point of the movie. What happens isn’t believable. The characters just function as plot devices for the story. And that really isn’t too bad of a thing until the climax of the film. In a drama movie, the climax really has to be something astonishing. Here, it was definitely astonishing. But not in the good way. The ending made me mad. It was a depressing cop-out that made me want to burn the screenplay to this film. The characters are bad, the story is bad, the direction is bad, and the movie just feels cheesy. Tennessee does not seem to have a great name in cinema, especially in this last decade. Within ten years, we brought into significance Miley Cyrus, Megan Fox (who is hot but can’t act to save her life), and now Country Strong. But we also did give the world Quentin Tarantino, so that’s a plus.
3.5/10