Country Strong ≠ "weak"

I happened to be glancing through the newspaper a few Sunday's ago and noticed there was an insert that had reviewed Country Strong, a movie I had seen a few days before. I decided to flip to the page and see how the critics were raving.

 "Two out of four stars?? ‘Country Strong is weak’? What the hell!” 

An overreaction? Perhaps. A faulty review? I would argue most definitely.

It wasn't like I was waiting for Country Strong to come out for months and memorized all the songs from it. Oh no. I leave that to others. Truthfully, I had pretty low expectations going into it. Gwyneth Paltrow and Leighton Meester singing country doesn't sound like the kind of movie that could blow someone’s mind. Plus, I heard the song “Country Strong" by Gwyneth Paltrow before I ever heard they were doing a movie and thought the Country Strong was going to be a movie about Gwyneth Paltrow as a singer like Justin Bieber and his Never Say Never movie, which would just be really pathetic. I went anyway, with one such Country Strong savant (who really did know all the songs and sang along with them, I kid you not), paid the $6 fee, smuggled some sour patch kids in, and grabbed some front row seats.

 I was really surprised; I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the movie as much as I did. For one thing, the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow really can sing and have a believable, and not overdone, country accent I found to be pretty impressive.  Even Leighton Meester played a country singer quite well,  and as the movie went on I stopped thinking of her as Blair from Gossip Girl and more as Chiles Stanton, the rising country star.  I thought the whole story line was original and the way they presented it by giving little bits of information about Kelly’s (Gwneth Paltrow’s character) past and problems here and there really kept me intrigued, and they made all the breakdown scenes really believable and real. I must say, Gwyneth Paltrow can play a drunk person quite well. I also really liked the fact that they didn’t use too many big name actors (other than Paltrow and Meester of course) and instead let us see the actors as the characters they portray.

One main problem I had with the review was that it claimed that "Country strong was weak“ and "my God was the script predictable”. I mean, I thought it was pretty damn original. I’m sure for someone whose job it is to watch thousands of movies and analyze them, it might be a little easier to call things that are going to happen. I only called one thing: the whole Kelly’s husband punching Beau for admitting that he was more than just her sponsor and hinting at them having an affair; but really, what else is he supposed to do when someone just admits that they’ve been sleeping with his wife? Give him his blessing?  I personally found the movie refreshing and genuine.

And for the record, I’m giving Country Strong four stars.