Country Strong

You know you're getting older when the starlets of your youth start to appear as alcoholic country music stars in terminal decline. But the mung bean munching Paltrow surely makes the most wholesome, healthiest looking dipsomaniac in movie history. She plays Kelly Canter, a troubled singer whose career hit the rocks when she hit the bottle. On her comeback tour she is accompanied by two young singers – rootsy Beau (Garrett Hedlund) and ex-prom-queen Chiles (Leighton Meester) – whose careers and love lives become entwined with her own.

Country Strong has highs and lows aplenty, reasonable performances and some decent songs (although Paltrow's singing doesn't entirely convince). But by insisting that fame and authenticity are mutually exclusive it fails to understand that country is the place where tackiness meets real suffering, and rhinestones meet really good songs. As a result the film ends up as something great country music never is: a bit dull. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]