Duets: A Contrarian View

[ You know... I guess I watched a different movie than everyone else here.
That, or maybe my tastes are just getting less well tuned in my dotage.
In any event; the review: ]

A small-time hustler, and the daughter who never really knew him.

A scratching, conniving ladder-climber, and the spurned taxi driver whose cab -- and life -- she commandeers.

A harried, overworked corporate pitchman who's sick of being in the wrong conference room, in the wrong hotel, in the wrong *city*... and not even being able to use his 800,000 frequent-flyer miles to pay for the room. And an ex-convict who never learned to drive, and also has "lots of experience in chains".

These are the threads that director Bruce Paltrow deftly weaves in this charming character study of 6 people and the hobby that draws them together.

That hobby, of course, is karaoke -- or as Huey Lewis' well-played small time con Ricky Dean would have it, "karate-oke". Called back to Las Vegas by the news of the death of a long lost love, he's cornered by her mother, and has it explained to him by Grandma that his daughter *will not* be deprived of both her parents in the same week.

He ducks out anyway, but she finds him on the road, and, in a performance by Gwyneth Paltrow that is either artless or a tour de force (I can't decide which, which is usually grounds for an Oscar) she worms her way back into his life... whether he likes it or not.

While that's going on, we're treated to the focused ambition of Suzi, played by ER's Maria Bello, who pretty much kidnaps Scott Speedman's Billy out of "the last bar in town", annoyed that their karaoke show isn't for money that night, and tells him that they're going to California... whether he likes it or not.

To round out the cast of characters, we meet the discontented Todd, played with perverse panache by Paul Giamatti, who ends up at a Poultry Growers Association meeting in a Texas hotel, instead of the theme-park pitch meeting in Orlando, Florida he'd been planning on. He makes it home from the meeting, discovers that, as usual, his kids don't really care if he's alive, and his wife is busy, "online" (she says, as if that explains it all). When he walks off down the hall, she asks where he's going, and he replies, as have so many other men in similar real-life circumstances, "out for a cigarette".

Pointing out to him that he doesn't smoke, she begins to realize that he's mad as hell, and isn't going to take it anymore. Easin' on down the road, we see him next in his Lincoln Town Car in the middle of the desert, with an earring -- one; in his right ear -- pulling over to pick up Reggie, probably the best characterization in the film, befitting the talents of Andre Braugher, whom we've just met in the previous scene when he climbed down out of the cab of the trucker who'd given him a lift... and held him up.

Todd, however, takes a good half of the rest of the movie to find out that Reggie's a stick-up guy, rather than a stand-up guy... which he turns out to be in the end, anyway. In any event, he picks Reggie up; they're going to Chicago... whether either of them like it or not.

Such is the stage set for their paths to converge at a $5000 contest in Nebraska, where Suzi almost gets cold feet, Liv almost ends up with Billy, and Reggie almost gets sent back to prison. If you want to find out what really happens, you'll have to plunk down the $7 just like I did... but if you've spent any time in karaoke bars, you'll likely find you've bought yourself 120 minutes of saying "Hey! I sang with that guy last month!"

Character studies, of course, depend much more on the reactions of the characters to the motions of the plot than they do on the actual details of that plot, and I'd have enjoyed seeing just a bit more depth to things like Liv's real-time discovery that hustling was how her dad made his living, and in turn, her real-time decision to back him up when one hustle went sour... and just what exactly turned up between Liv and Billy at the end.

Overall, though, the movie went along very much in the checkerboard fashion of a good episode of The Love Boat; each story had a reason to exist, enough detail to make the characters and their motivations
believable, and a reasonable ending. The dialogue was very well done, too; this movie has several catch phrases that I have no doubt I'll end up hearing around "the circuit".

And, of course, you weren't left thinking "damn, these karaoke people are dysfunctional." That was very important to me. As a participant in many esoteric hobbies over the years, I've become accustomed to seeing them co-opted to provide a vehicle for mainstream entertainment, usually at the expense of the reputation of the hobby involved, and the people who participate in it. This happens, of course, because producers, directors and writers typically are not the sort of people who participate in *those* hobbies: they're Hollywood people.

But in this case, karaoke came out looking pretty decent. There were the usual technical gaffes: Pioneer made much of its technical participation in the production of the film, in the person of consultant "Karaoke Kurt" who actually did a pretty good cameo singing Tom Jones' Delilah in the contest finals -- not an easy song to sing. Despite that, though, the lyrics on the monitors visible in the singing scenes were not backed by the short films customary on Pioneer's franchise line of LaserVision videodiscs... and the color-changes of the lyrics were even further off the actual timing of the vocals than many discs really are -- which is something the Pioneer discs typically have *less* trouble with than some of the other available brands.

If you're less anal-retentive than I am, though (and, yes, that word *does* have a hyphen in it :-), these points won't hold a candle to the story for you, and, indeed, they troubled me less than technical carelessness has in many other movies set in milieus with which I'm intimately familiar (television production, ham radio, publishing, and the Internet and computing come instantly to mind from recent films).

All in all, a decent collection of fairly believable stories happening to empathetic characters in a reasonable approximation of the world we live in -- collected in a movie that has something to say (or perhaps, to sing) which I think you'll enjoy listening to.

As noted above, it would appear that I'm pretty much alone in that opinion; that's ok, I'm used to that. Look at it this way: if I was wrong, it was only seven bucks out of your life. If you're ever in Florida, I'll buy you a beer. :-)

It's probably worth noting, in evaluating this opinion, that I *am* a karaoke singer... and will admit to that in public. (A crime in seven states; don't let on. :-) I note that none of the other reviewers I've read disclose their status one way or the other...