Movies: ‘Country Strong’ strikes out

Unnecessary character, clichéd love lines spoil potential Oscar contender

The trailer advertises “Country Strong,” written and directed by Shana Feste, as a Britney-Spears-success-then-hits-low-point-of-life biopic in the form of a fictional character named Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) who is an alcoholic and has a marital problem. But instead, the movie’s plot went something like this: Follow your dreams…Follow what’s in your heart…Don’t let anyone push you around…If you fall, pick yourself back up…Love is the key that holds us together…Love is the meaning of life…Life is not worth living without love. But the clichés didn’t stop with the plot—the movie was stuffed with cliché phrases.The film is categorized as a drama, but in reality, it is a chick flick where teenage boyfriends are painfully dragged to the theatre so their girlfriends can happily watch their Gossip Girl idol Leighton Meester, who plays Chiles Stanton, a rising pageant queen who wants to be a singer. However, Stanton’s love story is in the clearly original story line of: she hates country singer Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund), but after getting to know the real Beau, she falls in love. Unfortunately, this story line seemed to take over the whole movie, whereas Kelly Canter’s story should have been the dominant one.Canter’s story and problems seem to parallel those who always win a bonanza of Oscar nominations. In addition, Paltrow’s performance as Kelly Canter is extremely believable, especially in the scene when she tries to resist her alcoholic addition. However, her cliché love lines held her back from shining throughout the movie. It starts from the beginning in the movie when Canter responds positively to her cheesy wife-and-husband-meeting story, and drags onto the end where Canter gives Stanton life lessons and says “Don’t be afraid to fall in love. It’s the only thing that matters in life.” If Meester’s character was cut out of the story along with additional editing of the cliché phrases, the movie would have been Oscar gold. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.