Country Strong 
 
 The corn is as high as a mechanical bull’s eye in “Country Strong,” a runny-mascara melodrama about a country-western superstar warbling, weeping and wailing her way back from another stint in rehab to the glare of the stage. Gwyneth Paltrow , working a deep-fried accent and a strategically conspicuous cross necklace, plays Kelly Canter, a high-profile train wreck who, in the wake of a disastrous tour and an alcohol-induced miscarriage, heads back on the road in hopes of setting her life and career straight. As they apparently like to say in Hollywood (still!), the only successful woman is a desperately unhappy woman. 
 
 If her tears are to be believed and, dang it, they rarely are, the diamonds circling Kelly’s neck are more of a leash. You first see those gems twinkling in the daylight as Kelly lies across a bed, listening as a young attendant and musician, Beau Hutton (an appealing Garrett Hedlund), serenades her with his crying guitar and moist eyes. Beau wants to make it, and maybe Kelly too, and for about three minutes it’s unclear if he’s a desperado or a knight in regulation cowboy hat and plaid shirt. Given that Kelly’s husband and manager, James, is played by the country-western star Tim McGraw, whose recent film resumé leans toward good guys in weepies like “The Blind Side,” it’s soon obvious that James isn’t the villain either. 
 
 No, the big bad here is fame, which ostensibly claws at Kelly from within and without. The writer and director Shana Feste (“The Greatest”) has an easier time stage-managing the exterior pressures, including the fans and media types clamoring for Kelly’s return. Having taken her out of rehab early, James is steering her back to performing, mostly because he thinks that’s what she needs. A sensitive soul of few well-written words, James always looks a teardrop away from sobbing, which makes him a fine husband in theory and a total drag on screen. He’s also — particularly given Mr. McGraw’s persuasive turn playing Mr. Hedlund’s violent father in the high school football movie “Friday Night Lights” — a genuine missed opportunity. 
 
 With all these nice guys, not to mention the adoring fans, a naïve moviegoer might think that Kelly would be happy. You, however, having been schooled by Hollywood and having worshiped at the altar of famous women suffering in movies like “Sunset Boulevard” and in any tabloid with Lindsay Lohan on the cover, know better. You understand that as each iteration of “A Star Is Born” teaches, women and success don’t mix. “You want to be somebody, but you want it to be easy,” an old lady tells the ingénue in the 1937 “Star,” adding, “Oh, you modern girls give me a pain!” To which Ms. Feste, proving that female filmmakers can rustle up distaff stereotypes as well as men, can only add a demographically canny amen. 
 
 Ms. Feste has said that Britney Spears was the actual inspiration for “Country Strong,” which perhaps helps explain its generic quality. It’s a depressing truism that Ms. Spears never seemed more like a real hurting person than when she was buzz-clipping her hair during her public meltdown. Conceived in a quieter key, Kelly breaks down so tastefully, she barely stirs the screen. Devoid of the passion that fuels real life or its camp mirror (there’s a touch of “Valley of the Dolls” here, but alas, only a hint), she tosses a few booze bottles, but her motivations remain amorphous. The dialogue explains that she’s haunted by her miscarriage, but neither Ms. Feste’s direction nor Ms. Paltrow’s acting takes you inside this awful pain. ||||| Country Strong 
 
 January 5, 2011 
 
 Cast & Credits Kelly Gwyneth Paltrow 
 
 James Tim McGraw 
 
 Beau Garrett Hedlund 
 
 Chiles Leighton Meester 
 
 Winnie Marshall Chapman 
 
 
 
 Screen Gems presents a film written and directed by Shana Feste. Running time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for thematic elements involving alcohol abuse and some sexual content). Printer-friendly » 
 
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 "Country Strong" is one of the best movies of 1957, and I mean that sincerely as a compliment. Lee Remick would have been terrific in this film — as good as Gwyneth Paltrow is. We live now in more fraught times, with Natalie Portman mentally disemboweling herself for her art while slipping into madness. And I admire Portman, and she will deserve her anticipated Oscar nomination. But "Country Strong" is a throwback, a pure, heartfelt exercise in '50s social melodrama, using such stock elements as a depressed heroine, her manipulating husband, an ambivalent Other Man, and tapping her toe impatiently in the wings, young Eve Harrington eager to swoop in and gnaw the heroine's courage from her bones. 
 
 It was shot in a straightforward meat-and-potatoes style, beautifully filmed by John Bailey. It takes place in what could be the Texas of "The Last Picture Show," except for some performances in a modern arena. It stars Paltrow as Kelly Canter, a troubled country singer who has been released from alcohol rehab too soon. Real-life country music star Tim McGraw plays James, the man Kelly married when they were in love, and now stays on as her controlling manager. Garrett Hedlund is Beau Hutton, a singer who "just likes to play music for people" and doesn't care about money. And Leighton Meester as Chiles Stanton, a former Miss Dallas who dreams of stardom. 
 
 
 
 Beau and Chiles. Man, are those '50s names. The plot does not neglect the tragic loss of Kelly's unborn child; while pregnant and drunk, Kelly fell from a stage. Nor Beau and James, who both fool around with Chiles, and both are probably in love with Kelly. After Beau (apparently) resigns his day job as an orderly at Kelly's rehab institution, these three people move in unison across Texas on a tour route scattered with emotional land mines. Kelly rides in the big customized bus. The rest bring up the rear in an old van. 
 
 
 
 It is a given that Kelly is a great star. Beau is a damn fine country singer, too good to play in bars that can't even afford enough extras to make up a crowd. Chiles is a promising singer but an emotional basket case because of deep insecurities left over from childhood. She's got herself one of those pinched-up fearful faces with her red lips all forced into a perfect bow, and hair too stiff. She's like a caricature of mama's little beauty pageant contestant until at the end, wow, she scrubs off the makeup and shampoos that hairspray off her hair, and we realize Leighton Meester is a beauty and not a victim of a cosmetics counter makeover. 
 
 
 
 Now it may seem that I am finding fault with "Country Strong." Quite the opposite. We must see a movie for what it is, not for what we think another film might have been. This is a movie into which Lee Remick and Rock Hudson and Sandra Dee would have slipped without shoehorns, and Douglas Sirk would have known where to march them. Its emotions are strong and visible. Its motives are clear. Its music performances are so good, we wish they lasted longer. Gwyneth Paltrow is so beautiful and is just really so nice that she brings enormous sympathy to her role. And Hedlund's Beau would do anything for a woman — or two women, in this case. 
 
 
 
 I eat this stuff up. Don't get all on your high horse. Big emotions are sprayed across the somewhat crowded quarters of a limited number of small sets, punctuated by second-unit drive-bys and grizzly good ol' boys filling out the frame. The only truly realistic character in the movie has hardly a line. That would be the tall, middle-age female who's apparently Kelly's wardrobe woman and follows her everywhere like those well-paid and not indifferent support people in the lives of stars. She sees everything and knows everything and keeps her mouth shut, which is what you want. She's got your back. 
 
 
 
 Another thing that places this movie in the 1950s milieu is its understanding of alcoholism. It thinks being drunk comes on people in sudden spurts, like a sneezing fit, and goes away when the plot needs it to. Kelly will be waving a vodka bottle at one moment and morosely pondering at the next. She (Paltrow, that is) has a lovely scene where she coaches young Chiles on what she needs to know about sweat stains, high heels and love. 
 
 
 
 Beau tells James his mistake was to take Kelly out of rehab before the rehab was finished. James is not a man of deep insights into drinking or sobriety. Three days after Kelly gets out of rehab, Beau catches her choking down pills in the dressing room. He confronts James about this. "I know!" he says. "I put them in her pillbox myself! They're not dangerous unless she drinks!" 
 
 
 
 I know I didn't hear you say that, James. Tell me you didn't.
– Critics make no bones about it: Skip Country Strong. (It's got a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though audiences are more generous at 50%.) A familiar tale of the struggle with fame, the Gwyneth Paltrow flick is pure schlock, they say: It’s “a runny-mascara melodrama” in which “the corn is as high as a mechanical bull’s eye,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Paltrow’s character “is a compendium of stereotypes about women forced to choose between career and love (guess which wins), while keeping an eye on the younger competition.” “The cast is sucked dry of any juice by Shana Feste, whose script is laughably inauthentic and whose direction marshals clichés as if they were freshly minted,” notes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “The dialogue could sink Streep.” Roger Ebert is more tolerant in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Country Strong is one of the best movies of 1957, and I mean that sincerely as a compliment.” It’s “a throwback, a pure, heartfelt exercise in '50s social melodrama.”