Duets

Herald rating: * *

Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Huey Lewis, Maria Bello, Andre Braugher, Paul Giamatti, Scott Speedman

Director: Bruce Paltrow

Rating:M (offensive language, sexual references)

Running Time: 112 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas

Review: Russell Baillie

If this film - about a bunch of disparate characters driven to such desperation they're singing karaoke for money - was a song, it would be one long first verse, a dull chorus, followed by a long, painful fade.

It has already spawned a hit in the form of Paltrow and Lewis singing Smokey Robinson's Cruisin'. Lovely song, and them white folks can sure hold a tune ... but once in the movie is really enough - and it's even weirder in that context, given the long-lost-father-daughter pairing.

What this film - directed by Paltrow's father, a veteran small-screen helmer - tries to be is a sort of on-the-road Short Cuts (in which 80s pop star Lewis appeared), with a story of how three odd couples find their way to a karaoke final in Nebraska.

Lewis and Paltrow meet up in Vegas at her mother's funeral; Giamatti is a businessman running away from suburbia, and Braugher an escaped con, who bond over the microphone as they make their way cross-country; Bello (Coyote Ugly) and Speedman are feisty firebrand and loser sensitive guy drawn together by a mutual need to escape their old lives.

Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Street) and Giamatti have the best of it, and apparently they can sing too.

However, the spotlight does dwell on Lewis and Paltrow and it's curious that for someone so slight - and who spends the film seemingly impersonating Phoebe from Friends - she certainly manages to overbalance this film with her, well, Gwynethness. As well, she's the most virginal Vegas showgirl ever to light up the big screen, undoubtedly because of Dad's protective instincts.

There are flashes of inspiration in the occasional scene, but they are let down by swings in tone and a pace deadened by letting those singing performances run momentum-deadeningly long enough to qualify this as a musical.

There is one quick discussion about the appeal of karaoke stateside - a world which looks like the musical equivalent of the Jerry Springer Show - in that it allows anyone to be a star for three-and-a-bit minutes.

But the script's main focus is those unlikely relationships and how (aww) harmony can come from voices which would otherwise have nothing to say to each other.

Duets has some nice tunes, it's just stuck in the wrong key.