Country Strong

Guest post by Lisa

I wanted to start this post by saying this movie was not quite what I expected. I don't think it was advertised well. All I ever heard or saw was Gwyneth Paltrow strumming a guitar, and doing her worst best country accent. On a side note, take it from someone raised in the South, you shouldn't have to try so hard to have a southern drawl. That's kind of the point. With that said, I was completely prepared for a cheesy and inaccurate movie about country living and music. What I got was something a lot more serious. The story follows a fallen country star Kelly Canter (Paltrow), and a singer song writer Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund) while they embark on a comeback tour. The tour had it's problems from the beginning, with Kelly's inability to control her alcoholism, and other demons from her past. Not to mention her infatuation with Beau, which her husband/Manager James (Tim McGraw) ignores, along with her drinking. James took her out of rehab before she was ready, because he felt that if she gets back to performing she will get better. He had good intentions, but was still remembering who she was, instead of realizing who she is now, and how to deal with that. Thrown in the middle of all the madness was an ex beauty queen Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester). She is a young and naive singer songwriter who wanted nothing more than to be just like her idol Kelly. What she learns is that being like Kelly is not all that it's cracked up to be. All in all this movie had some ups and a lot of downs, but was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It was advertised as an up beat comeback tour of a country star, but was much more in depth and darker than that. Maybe if they would have advertised it differently I would have made my way to the theater, but now we will never know.

NBM rates Country Strong- Good