Duets
**1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Icon on November 17, 2000; certificate 15; 112 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Bruce Paltrow; produced by
John Byrum, Kevin Jones, Bruce Paltrow.
Written by John Byrum.
Photographed by Paul Sarossy; edited by Jerry
Greenberg.
CAST.....
Maria Bello..... Suzi Loomis
Andre Braugher..... Reggie Kane
Paul Giamatti..... Todd Woods
Huey Lewis..... Ricky Dean
Gwyneth Paltrow..... Liv
Scott Speedman..... Billy Hannon
Marian Seldes..... Harriet Gahagan
Angie Phillips..... Arlene
You'll see a lot of reviews for "Duets"
declaring how well the musical numbers work. In a way that's more
criticism than praise. It's okay for a movie like "The Filth and the Fury"
to stop for its songs, because a lot of its points lie in the music. "Duets"
wants to tell a story about people; just because they happen to do a lot
of singing, the pastime shouldn't take centre stage.
The music indeed is very good. Gwyneth Paltrow
reveals herself as a talented vocalist with a moving female version of Kim
Carnes's "Bette Davis Eyes", a pair of guys gain the attention of a whole
bar when they sing "Try a Little Tenderness", and, Marilyn Manson take note,
there's a wonderfully energetic rendition of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams".
We're relieved whenever someone starts crooning, because we don't have to
sit through the more of story. A signal that the movie is in trouble,
perhaps?
The film takes place in the world of karaoke singing
-- and, if you know anyone who's well into this hobby, you know it can be
a phenomenon as addictive as record collecting, football, or… uh…
bingo. For a while it seems as if the screenplay is going to come to the
conclusion that karaoke is some sort of metaphoric solution for the problems
of life, but the filmmakers are not that silly, or that
courageous.
No, instead we just follow a few pairs of characters
as they travel across America's karaoke bars, hoping to get to the national
championships and win $5,000. One would think they probably spent more than
that on petrol, but there I go with the plot, and as I said before, this
is supposed to be a story about people. There's a karaoke hustler (Huey Lewis)
with his long lost daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow), a businessman in mid-life
crisis (Paul Giammatti) accompanied by a convict hitchhiker (Andre Braughter),
a broken-hearted cab driver (Scott Speedman) with a woman who's been around
the block (Marian Seldes).
I don't go into more detail because the movie
doesn't. It wants to spend time with these folks without ever doing more
than scratching the surfaces of their relationships. Most of the dialogue
is functional getting-to-know-you stuff, nothing more than the standard soap
opera cliché you'd expect from stories about family members with rocky
histories, or men from different backgrounds, or a wide-eyed guy with a tough
cookie gal. Granted, near the end all of them open up to each other with
confessional heart-to-hearts, but that's not enough.
There are little irritations to point out: Paltrow,
despite her great singing, plays her character like a weird little girl on
a sugar rush; her grin is phoney, her voice wimpy, her eyes look like they're
gonna pop out of her head, and she seems so excited by Lewis that we keep
expecting her to scream "Oooh, daddy, daddy!" I wasn't convinced one bit
by people falling for Lewis's act, where he pretends like he doesn't know
what karaoke is… or by Giammatti's sincere ignorance of it; is there
anyone on the planet who is unaware of what the activity
entails?
That's not the movie's real flaw, though. It's
amusing at times -- beautiful in certain aspects, like the rapport between
Giammatti and Braugher -- but nothing is ever fleshed out, as a whole the
piece seems pretty flat, and, quite simply, what's the point?
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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