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Duets (2000)

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Edgy MD Nov 29 2011 06:38 AM

Six loozas travel cross-country in accidental pairs stublign toward their destny --- a high-stakes karaoke championship in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [list:905dbpaz][*:905dbpaz]An ex-con (Andre Braugher) doing a bad job reintegrating into honest society, travelling with[/*:m:905dbpaz] [*:905dbpaz]A burned-out commercial real-estate developer (Paul Giammatti), looking for new life in the thrill of pills and bright lights of karaoke.[/*:m:905dbpaz] [*:905dbpaz]A tramp (Maria Bello) trading her body for meals, beds, and rides, travelling with[/*:m:905dbpaz] [*:905dbpaz]A failed priest (Scott Speedman) turned cuckolded cabby, brokenhearted by the brokenness of this broken world.[/*:m:905dbpaz] [*:905dbpaz]A lone-wolf karaoke hustler (Huey Lewis), making a living on the big-stakes sidebets he suckers lounge lizards into, travelling against his will with[/*:m:905dbpaz] [*:905dbpaz]The daughter he never knew (Gwyneth Paltrow),a Vegas casino worker thrown together with him after her Vegas casino worker mother dies of a sudden aneurysm.[/*:m:905dbpaz][/list:u:905dbpaz] See, karaoke songs are sometimes performed as duets, and they're travelling in pairs, sort of like duets. The title has a double meaning that way.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Nov 29 2011 06:52 AM Re: Duets (2000)

Huey Lewis' finest performance on film since his Back to the Future cameo, no doubt.

Edgy MD Nov 29 2011 07:19 AM Re: Duets (2000)

He's game, playing against his genial type as a real jerk. It's a real disaster. If this film was a karaoke performance, it would be drunk sorority girls screeching out "Brown-Eyed Girl." Bruce Paltrow, who had spent most of his career as a TV director, gets the big chair here by bringing his star of a daughter along for the ride. She was 27 at this point, but appears to be playing a teenager. He should have shot a White Shadow cast reunion movie instead.

TransMonk Nov 29 2011 07:39 AM Re: Duets (2000)

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Huey Lewis' finest performance on film since his Back to the Future cameo, no doubt. No love for Short Cuts?

Edgy MD Nov 29 2011 08:24 AM Re: Duets (2000)

Short Cuts is a good reference, because a Robert Altman could have made something of this kind of material --- dark ensemble comedy, drenched in American pathos, featuring game performances by musicians Huey Lewis (and scenes by forgotten players like Angie Dickinson). That's where Altman lived and he was probably Paltrow's model. But where Altman gives us hard to swallow realism, you just get distasteful gag lines. Where Altman cuts deftly between various interweaving story lines --- extending a film to three hours if necessarily, here we get ham-fisted editing leading to incoherent unseen jumps in character development. Sober characters become addicts offscreen. Estranged characters reconcile offscreen. Characters on a hateful course find their inner decency without that all-important Rocky scene where they look in the mirror and wonder what they've made of themselves. You're most common exclamation during this movie will be "When did that happen?" Most offensive part is that Andre Braugher --- and when I say he's the only minority character in this film, I may have missed somebody, but I'm counting walk-ons and cameos and extras --- turns out to be the noblest of noble savages.