Country Strong: An Attempt to Play to the Rural Seats is as Boring and Sanitized as Contemporary Country Music

Most Hollywood movies are made in cities by people who live in cities for people that will watch them in cities, but every once and a while an attempt comes along to capitalize on an audience usually ignored: the 75 percent of the country classified as a fly over state. Movies like The Passion of the Christ bring people out of the woodwork (literally) and into a theater who may not have been to a movie theater in years. I remember working at a movie theater when it came out and can’t count the wheelchairs I had to push into the theater. One lady told me it was the first movie she’d seen in a theater since John Wayne quit making movies.

Country music based movies are a particularly targeted attempt to get this audience. Some of these movies (Walk the Line, Crazy Heart) are very good, and some of them are Country Strong. This movie is a very realistic portrayal of post-Johnny Cash country music: scrubbed clean, sleepy, and flavorless. Even “edgier” themes like adultery and alcoholism aren’t really presented in a way you couldn’t show a Sunday school class, or haven’t seen in a hundred better movies about hard living country music stars that don’t really exist anymore. Gone are the days of boozer country stars singing about poverty and the criminal underclass of the South, and in are the Brad Paisleys, Keith Urbans, and Carrie Underwoods singing about barbecues, having a good time, and proms.

The movie also avoids the right wing leanings of country music, only hinting at the onstage flag waving and Bible thumping some stars indulge in. In a way it’s a very realistic depiction of the bland flavor of contemporary country music, which is so pitifully devoid of rebels Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks looks controversial. The movie stays boring until the last five minutes, no rebels in sight.

What Works: Against all odds, Gwyneth Paltrow is convincing as a country music diva from Nashville. Unfortunately, her screen time isn’t as much as you might think and she’s almost crowded out of her own movie by the end of it. Also, the twist ending makes the movie more interesting than it has any right to be and briefly jolted me awake.

What Doesn’t: More or less everything else from Garret Hedlund’s character getting the majority of the screen time to Tim McGraw’s character dressing like a Civil War area hipster.

What I Would Have Done Differently: Probably would have made a much different movie about a Toby Keith style blowhard played by Eastbound and Down’s Danny McBride, and filmed it mockumentary style as a country music version of This is Spinal Tap.