Duets (2000)
Directed by Bruce Paltrow
Duets is a road-trip comedy which revolves around the little known world of karaoke and the whimsical characters who inhabit it. All roads lead to Omaha, site of a national karaoke competition where this motley group of singers and stars come together for a blow-out sing-off.
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The surprise among these actors is Huey Lewis, who has worked in other movies (notably Robert Altman's " Short Cuts ") but here generates an immediate interest in his first scene--we watch him conning a karaoke champ, and savor the timbre of his voice and the planes of his face.
The film aims for the fragmented, kooky sharpness of Short Cuts but quickly dissolves into offensive mush.
Singer-actor Huey Lewis (of pop group Huey Lewis and the News fame, and the movie "Short Cuts") plays a self-centered karaoke hustler who is forced to accompany his estranged daughter Liv (Gwyneth Paltrow of "Bounce") on one of the aforementioned road trips.
Her rendition of Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" is delightful, and her climactic duet with her father, played admirably and with an added dose of tough realism by Huey Lewis (1993's "Short Cuts"), in which they both somehow come to terms with their newfound relationship through the words of Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'," is one of the most indelible film moments of the year.
This first feature from Gavin Wiesen (whose credits list him as an assistant to director Bruce Paltrow on the movie Duets) is about a Manhattan private-school senior named George (Freddie Highmore).