Country Strong

[lety]

Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund) is a good-looking singer/songwriter who loves to play his music in front of appreciative crowds in dive bars. They love him, he loves them, and all is right with the world. But when Beau's off the stage, his real job is to help out at a rehab center and that's where poor Beau encounters the woman who turns his world completely upside down.Country superstar Kelly Canter is a patient at the rehab hospital, and of course she and Beau make a connection over music. They try out lyrics on each other, and you know that's not all they're 'trying out' together. The six-time Grammy winner - don't worry if you don't catch how many Grammys she's won the first time she says it, it's repeated over and over again throughout the film lest we forget how great this troubled singer once was - had to cut short her latest tour after a disastrous show in Dallas in which the then five month pregnant alcoholic was so drunk she tripped over a mic cord, fell, and lost the baby (thankfully we don't actually see this tragic event). Now she's trying to get herself together in what's likely an expensive, exclusive rehab center, but her manager/husband James (Tim McGraw who never sings) has other plans. Against everyone's advice, James pulls Kelly out of rehab a month before she's scheduled to be released. Why? So she can get back on tour because, you know, that's the best thing for someone in her fragile condition to do. Beau argues against it, but an extremely rude and condescending James puts him in his place and pushes Kelly into agreeing with him that she's ready to leave.Now here comes the kicker... Before they leave the hospital, they sit outside surrounded by gorgeous scenery and Kelly reveals what she's been cradling in a cigar box. Seems she's rescued an orphaned quail and is now it's mother. James gets all gushy over his wife's maternal instincts coming out and since they lost their child due to Kelly's drinking, together they pledge to raise the bird as their own and show it the good life. All right, so that part's made up - the gushing and the raising, but not the appearance of the orphaned bird in their lives. That really happens in Country Strong. And yes, we're supposed to connect her need to care for the bird as her attempt to show she could have been, and might still be able to be, a good mother.

The next major leap of faith comes when James decides to hire on Beau and an unknown beauty queen (played by Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester) to open for Kelly when she hits the road on tour again. She's a six-time Grammy winner who sells out arenas, and her controlling, manipulative husband/manager signs up two people with no experience to open for her after seeing them perform once in a bar, a performance which found the beauty queen freezing up and unable to open her mouth until Beau took to the stage to help her. Does this make sense to anyone? No matter, it happens, so we must live with writer/director Feste's decision and forget about logic. As long as Kelly's still got that baby bird to nurture, everything will work out in the end, right?

So now we've got the unlikely trio of a train-wreck of a country singer, an emotionally vulnerable beauty queen who can actually sing, and Beau - the sensitive hunk both women desire. Throw in the pushy manager/husband who no longer wants to sleep with his wife or support her emotionally and it's a time bomb just waiting to explode. And there's that bird to consider, too. Don't forget about the bird.