Duets (2000)

I love this movie so much

Absolutely Fantastic

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Ricky Dean (Huey Lewis) hustles karaoke like a pool shark. He reconnects with his estranged daughter Liv (Gwyneth Paltrow) and go on the road together. Todd Woods (Paul Giamatti) is a struggling traveling businessman and family man. He picks up hitchhiking escaped convict Reggie Kane (Andre Braugher). Billy (Scott Speedman) is a heartbroken cabbie who picks up Suzi Loomis (Maria Bello). The three duos are headed for a national karaoke competition in Omaha.It's a bunch of people in this small world of competitive karaoke. The good is that it treats this world sincerely. The characters are rather scattered and doesn't necessarily add up to an exciting story. Ricky and Liv have a nice father and daughter story. Woods and Kane are going crazy. It does have some good singing from surprising sources especially Paltrow and Braugher. This movie is very much like karaoke. You get surprised at how good some of the singing turns out to be but the intangible substance is not always there.

The Duets is very charming, relaxing film. You can take your popcorn, sit back and enjoy adventure of middle age man who decided to put some action in his life and for sure many people will laugh hardly recognizing themselves and their funny moments in frustrations :)I don't want to spoil anything, you just watch this and enjoy in flow of sweet polite characters here and their story. Well, we all are sick from violence and swearing in movies and they are worst year by year so i hope you see this one and fill brain with joy,honesty and love. You can find that in The Duets. For sure.If IMDb allows me to share beautiful music video from this movie it will be great:https://vimeo.com/47710464

This movie is so retarded that it would be hard to find anything really good to say about it if you are looking for a film that has even the slightest pretense of being realistic. None of the characters are drawn from real life. I mean people just do not act the way they do in real life. If this were a comedy that might be acceptable for the sake of getting a laugh, but this pretentious, disjointed work isn't even a black comedy so there's no real reason to accept what you see on screen. None of the people in the movie are very likable. If the lead male character was focused on as someone having a dreadful midlife crisis, I might have overlooked some of the plot silliness but he's not. If you want a by-the-formula movie, full of improbable action and absurd coincidences, vile profanity and needless brief nudity, then spend your time watching this piece of junk.

Writer John Byrum and director Bruce Paltrow ostensibly had a good idea--to catch the fever of semi-professional karaoke singers in action--but maybe this subject might have been better served by a documentary. Byrum's hackneyed plots involving the troubled performers never take off, and Paltrow's staging of the musical numbers is far too slick. How much excitement can you work up when your karaoke singers are lip-synching? Gwyneth Paltrow, playing a child-like woman who is reunited with her estranged father, is a lovely presence, yet hiding her intrinsically smart and savvy personality here does her no favors. The most surprising thing about the picture is that Paul Giamatti can carry a tune, although he's distinctly studio-enhanced, as if the producers were hoping to get a hit soundtrack out of this thing. Small wonder the movie flounders; it's calculated and colorless. *1/2 from ****