Shockingly, the singing in "Country Strong" is great. You wouldn't expect Gwyneth Paltrow to be a good singer but she could easily sell albums.
The film is about redemption; a veteran country star Kelly Canter (Paltrow) gets another chance to make a name for herself after a rough career. The film begins with Kelly leaving rehab and planning to do a comeback tour. Of course she's not healed because about three scenes later she's drinking again. However we never see her hit rock bottom, which is what should've happened. She needed to do one idiotic thing and rebuild herself so we could feel more attached to her. Instead we get one scene of her dancing drunk at a bar and then right after she's happily singing to a kid with cancer. Her character was all over the place and eventually you stop caring.
The film was stuck between being a second-chance film and an uprising of new talent movie. Both premises are good but it needed to have a main focus. As a result the balance was off. Certain characters were underused.
The climax of the film is another concert. Yet the scene is spectacular, high energy and exhilarating. The best in the entire film. You could feel the same excitement the crowd in the arena is feeling. Canter rises up to the stage in a red dress. Thousands of fans cheering her on as she belts out her new song.
The film could have ended right there, but no. It had to keep meandering on and a last minute curve ball had to be thrown in to rev up the emotion. A little too late, unfortunately.[[In-content Ad]]
