DUETS (director: Bruce Paltrow; screenwriter: John Byrum; cinematographer: Paul Sarossy; editor: Jerry Greenberg; cast: Maria Bello (Suzi Loomis), Andre Braugher (Reggie Kane), Paul Giamatti (Todd Woods), Huey Lewis (Ricky Dean), Gwyneth Paltrow (Liv), Scott Speedman (Billy), Lochlyn Munro (Ronny Jackson), Kiersten Warren (Candy Woods), Marian Seldes (Harriet Gahagan), Angie Phillips (Arlene), Angie Dickinson (Blair); Runtime:112; Hollywood Pictures; 2000)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Duets is the second feature film by longtime TV producer Bruce Paltrow (A Little Sex), it stars his daughter Gwyneth. There are also some interesting casting choices he makes such as, a cameo for Angie Dickinson as Gwyneth's grandmother and the noted singer Huey Newton in a starring role, whose expressions and looks reminded me of Sydney Pollack.
Duets is a cross-country road comedy/drama whose stage is karaoke, which uses that setting to explore the hopes of three twosomes headed for a karaoke contest in Omaha. They search for what went wrong in their lives as they try to come to terms with their family crisis: Ricky Dean (Huey Lewis) is a selfish, enigmatic karaoke hustler, pretending not to know what karaoke is as he works his hustle, who meets his daughter -- a Vegas casino girl named Liv (Gwyneth Paltrow) -- for the first time at the funeral of her Vegas showgirl mother; a toady traveling salesman, Todd Woods (Paul Giamatti), who goes out for a pack of cigarettes but doesn't return home when he gets a chilly reception from his suburban wife and kids, after flying to Houston and thinking he's in Florida to pitch a theme park. He leaves his family and becomes a deranged monster railing against American culture and its misuse of the frequent flyer miles perks the airlines advertise but do not deliver on what is promised. He will give the ex-con Reggie Kane (Andre Braugher) a ride, and their odd friendship will center around the salesman trying to break the chains of his empty life by taking mood-altering drugs and singing karaoke; and lastly, a young, underachieving, angelic Cincinnati cabdriver, Billy (Scott Speedman), who reluctantly agrees to drive an edgy waitress and hooker, Suzi Loomis (Maria Bello), with ambitions to be a singer, to California, after he catches his wife sleeping with his taxi partner, stopping off on the way for Suzi to compete in karaoke bars for prize money, before going to Omaha with her when she wins her competition.
The salesman story is the featured one, evoking a sense of the American culture being a deadly one to one's psyche. This story is the most bizarre and implausible, but it has the strength of bringing out a number of small truths that add up, allowing the film to maintain a quirky sense of justification for its messiness. Its impact is helped greatly by the engagingly nuanced performances of Giamatti and Braugher. I first thought Giamatti, who is not a household name as an actor, was Wallace Shawn doing Giamatti. Giamatti, who turns from a meek salesman to a terrorist-like maniac waving a gun at America's false dreams, gives the film its finest vitality, as he gets to emote all screenwriter John Byrum's best lines.
The two things this film has going for it in spades, is the lively karaoke music and the unpredictability of its comedy, which gives the film a very fresh feel, even overcoming the nonsense of its interconnected stories and awkward sense of drama. These stories don't exactly connect for these disenfranchised folks, but it shows what happens to them psychologically when they come to a crossroads in Omaha, making it appear to be the Super Bowl for dreamers in the world of karaoke -- their chance to heal their wounded egos as they steal someone else's talent for a few moments and call it theirs.
The film starts off in a karaoke bar in Tulsa, where Ricky is a karaoke hustler, if there is such an animal as that, it's new to me -- but his thing is to bet other performers that he can top them, betting a huge sum of money over the usual $100 first-place prize. There is also a trip to Omaha for the winner, where the competition is national and the prize money is significantly higher at $5,000, but considering the way money has been thrown around in contests with less skill than this one, this is still a very low figure as a payoff. This hustling bit brought back memories of Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason as pool sharks in the "The Hustler," or more recently Matt Damon as a card hustler in the "Rounders." The hustle is more than what the money can bring them, therefore the stakes aren't as important as what the rush brings to their ego.
When father and daughter bond in Vegas, he has no choice but to take her to Omaha, where he sees that she can also belt out a tune karaoke style. She does a marvelous rendition of "Bette Davis Eyes." But their story was rather tame, as there was nothing touching about their relationship and nothing revealed that wasn't expected, it played as if something was left out but that it wasn't important to find out what that was. Yet their chemistry was good together, making their story most watchable one.
The story that seemed the most forced was the cabbie and the whore on the run one. She turns out to be like all the other karaoke performers, needing someone else's tender love to make the world a warmer place. This vignette took its dramatics too seriously and explained their obvious emergency relationship in too fine a matter for how absurd it all seemed.
I must applaud the film for not emphasizing the competition at the contest, as so many recent commercial films have in such films, and for taking a chance and going for some dramatic fireworks in a screwball comedy. That it doesn't always come together as a fluid film, is pushed aside by how zany and entertaining it was, with a good sense of energy released through some risks that were taken by not trying to put together a familiar film. I have a good feeling about this film and think it will stay around as a cult favorite and grow in status over the years.
REVIEWED ON 10/14/2000 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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