What A Load Of Bollocks

Country Wrong

In concert, Tim McGraw wears jeans so tight you can see . . . why Faith Hill married him. Girl’s no fool. McGraw the Singer has macho covered; just check out how he struts his bad self singing the testosterone-heavy “The Cowboy in Me”:

Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it. The Inky Jukebox has seen McGraw in concert and those jumbo screens ain’t a hardship, if you get my drift.

So it is with incredulity that The Inky Jukebox notes that when it comes to Tim McGraw the Actor, all we get is the empty crotch pouch where his swaggering balls used to fill the seams. Where, oh where can his testicles be?

In his last foray into the thespian world, The Blind Side, he played Sandra Bullock’s wife and she won an Oscar for best actress! To this day, nobody knows why. (To any of the possible questions raised by this paragraph so far.) In his latest venture, Country Strong, he plays Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow’s wife. The Inky Jukebox sees a pattern emerging: if you need a spineless shell of a man to support a scenery-chewing woman in a maudlin schlock fest of a movie, and that movie is set below the Mason-Dixon Line, and it clearly is a chick-flick — then hire Mr. McGraw for the role.

I confess: I only watched Country Strong because I was on an overnight flight and the battery on my laptop was dead, so I was limited to the airline’s onboard selection. (Same goes for The Blind Side.) I could not finish the movie. Halfway through I realized that I simply didn’t care about any of these people and didn’t want to waste a precious moment more of my life attempting to follow the saga of a blonde chick with a serious case of ennui and an inexplicable thing for birds in boxes (or was it a mouse? not sure) who allegedly used to be a big star but has since fallen from grace because she’s a fucked-up drunk who can’t choose between two good-looking men, one of which is her Svengali-manager husband…etc etc etc. Somewhere in that hot mess is a young lass who is supposed to be a good singer who is also being pursued (or is the pursuer? not sure) of the two men, yadda yadda yadda. One’s a blonde and the other’s a brunette. Something awful happened in Dallas sometime. Whatev.

If you are the sort of person who can suspend their disbelief (vis-à-vis Ms. Paltrow being a washed-up country singer) long enough to make it through to the end, then good for you. Why on earth are you still reading? If, on the other hand, you cannot, then the movie fails at the outset because it simply isn’t believable and the plot, such as it is, is so fragmented (editing? anyone?) that it makes no sense. Here: in case your curiosity is piqued, you can watch the entire movie. (OK, it's just the trailer -- but it is in fact the whole movie.)

Tim McGraw suffers painfully for his art having to watch his balls being fed into the wood-chipper that is Ms. Paltrow’s ACTING. The glue keeping his beard on must itch under those hot lights, too. Or is it his real hair? Any man who wears a hat as much as Tim McGraw is begging us to think he’s bald.

The only possible way this film could have been appealing is if it just dropped the pretense of a storyline and just have everybody take their clothes off and fuck. Porn is successful because it knows this. Maybe that did happen, but because the film had been altered for the wee screen embedded in the back of the seat and there could be children watching, it had been cut out. Or maybe the movie ended that way and I turned it off too early.

Nah — we all know how it ends, which is part of the problem. Ms. Paltrow has been widely viewed in a music video for the song “Country Strong” where it appears the character she plays she slays her demons enough to turn herself into Taylor Swift in a red dress made from McGraw’s scrotum giving a mighty comeback performance at some forgiving joint somewhere. (Dallas, perhaps?)

At this juncture it behooves The Inky Jukebox to reassure its readers that it has nothing against Ms. Paltrow or Mr. McGraw personally; this is a diatribe against schlock that is allowed to happen by a movie industry that has no clue that real talent and drama comes out of Nashville so has to invent it by chasing all the stereotypes.

Tim McGraw: the only balls out of your reach should be the inflatable ones being batted about in your audience at a concert. Gwyneth Paltrow: do that duet with Jay-Z you have been asking for and leave Country music alone.