IN WHICH I SPOIL THE FUCK OUT OF COUNTRY STRONG, BUT YOU WEREN’T GOING TO SEE IT ANYHOW, WERE YOU?
(So unnecessarily long but I have SO MANY IMPORTANT THOUGHTS on this thoroughly unimportant movie)
The male lead in Country Strong is wicked hot. In real life I go for schlubby beardos with poor social skills, but in PG-13 movies about white people and their problems, I like wicked hotties with strategic scruff. This particular wicked hottie talks all mumbly and works his mouth real purty around a microphone. Apparently he is also the star of the new TRON movie? I don’t think I can see TRON now, because I don’t want to see this handsome fuck in anything more high-tech than denim on denim and a busted amp. I also don’t want to know what his real name is. I don’t even remember his character’s name. All I remember is the part where he leans on a doorjamb and says, “Tell me what you want.”
The female lead in Country Strong is Gwyneth Paltrow, and for like thirty whole seconds I actually believed she could be a country star. First, her indiscriminate southern accent is adorable. Second, her hair is sufficiently shiny, and she does a good job strutting onstage, and she has a really cute scene with a chemo kid (for real). Also, her character is an alcoholic and at one point Gwynnie screams “GIVE ME THE BOTTLE” and slumps in a shower stall, so basically, A+++ performance as Every Poorly Written Addict Ever. Unfortunately she lost me in the climactic concert scene when she sang “if you got it, flaunt it/shake that thing,” and the thing she shakes is her vagina, and I’m like girl please I don’t think that’s the thing to which your song is referring, have some self-respect. Seriously, the female director of this female-fronted film should perhaps have reconsidered shoving the camera right up against her female star’s female zone. I guess that’s what happens when you let a woman drive AMIRIGHT, UP TOP BRO.
Speaking of driving, the aforementioned male lead in Country Strong, let’s call him Mumbles O’Scruff, who as a reminder is wicked fucking hot, drives a beat up truck. Because, of course. Of course he drives a beat up truck and plays his granddaddy’s Gibson and wears Carhartts (true story, a couple months ago at the Target I overheard a woman say, “Did you know that in big cities on the coasts, people wear Carhartts to be fashionable?” I LIVE IN MONTANA). The only thing wrong with this hot piece of country ass is that he refers, more than once, to “Merle Haggard.” Everyone knows a scruffy, mumbly, mouth-skilled cowboy doesn’t use last names for his favorite singers. It’s just Johnny, Buck, Hank, Willie, Merle, etc. Later in the movie, his character is referred to as the next Townes van Zandt. Tim McGraw actually says this out loud: “they’re calling him the next Townes van Zandt.” Theaters full of Taylor Swift fans turn to each other and whisper, “I think we learned about him in history class, he was like, the czar of Turkrussialand or something.” Real fans of real music probably don’t see this movie, but if they do they turn to each other and whisper, “please do not sully the good name of Townes.” Indifferent fans of wicked hotties with beautiful mouths go, “whatever I’ll overlook it, lemme get another close-up of Scruff Mumbleson’s fuckable face.”
SPEAKING OF FACES, country music superstar Tim McGraw plays Gwyneth’s husband/manager, and he does some really great face-acting. In one part, he looks kind of sad, and then in another part, he looks a little bit unhappy. If you saw him in that football movie, Sandra Bullock Adopts a Giant, you know what I’m talking about. It must be in Tim McGraw’s acting contract that he can only play mildly supportive, mostly useless husbands. I think the adjective I’m looking for is “dickless.” I’ll say this, Tim McGraw is really, really good at wearing tailored jeans. He is also really, really good at crouching in hallways when he’s supposed to be upset, which he does approximately thrice in Country Strong. I guess crouching in tailored jeans is easy when you don’t have a dick.
LEST IT SEEM that I am objectifying men too much, I will now also objectify a woman. Leighton Meester is soooo cuuuuute I want to braid her hair and tell each other secrets and maybe some kissing. In Country Strong she plays a naive singer with a heart of gold and a voice of gold and adorable little boobies of gold. I really go for tiny brunettes and Leighton is the tiny-brunettiest, but I don’t like to see pictures of her out of character because in real life she dresses like if the 80’s and 90’s had a baby and then threw up all over it. In this movie she wears symmetrical mini-dresses and mascara. Also in this movie, she and Scruff-face McMumbles totally bone, but because it’s PG-13 for fans of country music, they don’t actually bone so much as stand upright in a darkened room and stroke each other’s sides. It’s very romantic and completely unappealing but that’s why the good lord gave us imaginations, am I right ladies, LADIEEEEEEEZ.
Here is the part where I ruin the ending but it doesn’t matter because Country Strong is a big, fat flop. A big, fat flop I was totally on board with for like 3/4 of the way through, mostly because of Scruff Mumbleson, and also because I fucking love country music, you guys. I do. Especially dive bar country music sung by dudes with legitimate facial hair who would rather play to a roomful of people who earned their beer than a stadium of evangelicals (I know this is a fabrication and a condescending one at that but fuck it, it’s a condescending fabrication I love. Shut up and leave me alone). What with Scruff McGruff the Crime Dog, Leighton, and Gwynnie with a southern accent, I was happy to go along for the ride. But then the ending happened and ohhhhh myyyyy godddddddd, the ending of this movie!
Wait, so the gist of the plot is that Country Music Megastar Gwyneth Paltrow just got out of rehab and is on her comeback tour. Will she make it? Will she stay off the bottle, put on a great show, and redeem her life and career? You would think YES, because this is a PG-13 movie with beautiful actors saying inane dialogue and kissing with their mouths closed. You would think the ending would be happy and redemptive and God Bless the USA.
BUT THEN GWYNETH PALTROW COMMITS SUICIDE AND A FLOCK OF BLACK BIRDS TAKE FLIGHT IN A FOGGY CEMETERY. SHE FUCKING KILLS HERSELF IN THE THIRD ACT. AND THERE IS A FOGGY FUNERAL SCENE. AND A FLOCK OF BLACK BIRDS TAKE FLIGHT. AND TIM MCGRAW WALKS VERY SLOWLY WITH HIS HEAD DOWN TO SHOW THAT HE’S LIKE SO TOTALLY SUPER-SAD RIGHT NOW, YOU GUYS.
But wait, there’s more: Scruffton Mumblefuck packs his old, beat-up truck and heads to California, but not before reading the SUICIDE NOTE (which Gwyneth narrates in voiceover, uhdoyyyyyy) and crying behind the wheel. The suicide note quotes Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson and is a total cop-out, bullshit device. Hey, want to ruin a fun movie full of cop-out, bullshit devices? End it with the worst, most depressing, most offensively stupid cop-out device of them all.
God. I hate when bad, fun movies stop being fun-bad and start getting real. And by real I mean really, really, opposite-of-fun bad. Hey remember Country Singer John from The Real World season 2? I wonder what he would make of this bullshit.
