I really feel annoyed by how bad I think Country Strong is going to be:
It's not that Gwyneth Paltrow can't sing, she totally can (though I'm much less certain about Leighton Meester's actual abilities). I think it's more that this story is annoying. We're supposed to feel sorry for Paltrow's character because she had this incredible hunger to be famous and loved once and threw it away on alcohol? I do think alcoholism and recovery can be compelling, but we need more of a core reason to care, other than she was hot and making her manager husband rich and now she's dysfunctional. Maybe corporatized country doesn't get this (and this feels like a story of very modern country, Loretta Lynn would never stand for this kind of empty bellyaching). But I don't know that that's inherently true. Toby Keith throws out better narratives than this every time he makes a music video (even if his features are disastrous)—I certainly think there's a fun sexual liberated preacher's daughter movie to be made out of "God Love Her," for example. But there has to be some rationale other than getting Gwyn's character back on stage. Otherwise she's just Lindsay Lohan with an ineffective twang.