Marquee value of an Academy Award-winning star lifted it up to the big screen -- a step higher than it should have gone.
Comment
01/01/00
Duets (2000)
21
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:86
Fresh:18
Rotten:68
Average Rating:3.9/10
Consensus: Duets suffers from sloppy direction and stretches credibility. Also, the characters are uninteresting and it's hard to care about what happens to them.
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Duets is a road-trip film about six individuals who throw off the binds of their pre-determined lives and strive to fulfill their dreams. The metaphor for this is Karaoke … the courage to stand up,... [More]
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Huey Lewis, Andre Braugher, Paul Giamatti
Director: Bruce Paltrow
Reviews for Duets
Top CriticClick to read the article
01/01/00
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01/01/00
Duets will be most appreciated by music buffs. The actual karaoke scenes attain the bounce that's missing from the rest of the film.
01/01/00
The film becomes an endurance test of tedious -- even painful -- labored dialogue and flat, counterfeit emotions.
01/01/00
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01/01/00
Looks a little like an early '70s TV-movie -- a lost, well-meaning artifact about 'looking for America' that you stumbled across during a late-night channel-surf.
01/01/00
Its fundamental error is that it tries to squeeze bittersweet heartbreak and goofy social satire into the same story. Just when the movie gets the rhythm, it steps on its own feet.
01/01/00
Top CriticDelightful peculiarities pepper-spice the film.
01/01/00
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01/01/00
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01/01/00
The film teases with a few moments of pep and reality until devolving precipitously into clumsy exposition and preposterous melodrama.
01/01/00
It sometimes sings off-key, but at least it sings proud.
01/01/00
Watching the intelligent Gwyneth Paltrow trying to play a dumb character like Liv is at best disconcerting and at worst embarrassing.
01/01/00
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01/01/00
Byrum's lackluster, ambling script and Bruce Paltrow's unimaginative reading of it routinely stand at cross-purposes with a first-class cast.
01/01/00
Aside from Duets seeming ridiculously dated, it is seriously tone-deaf. It veers wildly from light pop to social protest to the kind of violent drama that could be played out to a rap track.
01/01/00
All the principal actors appear to be in pain. Gwyneth looks befuddled by Dad's direction: all she can do is crunch down her eyebrows in despair.
01/01/00
Duets is miserable as it crawls for two eternal hours toward being 'life-affirming.' Should any movie about karaoke be this relentlessly sour?
01/01/00
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