September 15, 2000 |  Duets is a mess, a muddled and meandering long-distance road movie that strives to be engagingly offbeat, but more often comes across as annoyingly off-key. It’s easy to see why the project appealed to director Bruce Paltrow, a television veteran whose classic St. Elsewhere careened between emotional extremes while intertwining diverse storylines. Trouble is, the tonal shifts aren’t nearly so smooth in Duets, and the lumpy mix of comedy, tragedy and sentimentality never jells. Despite some fine performances and a few well-tuned individual scenes, the movie is far less than the sum of its parts.

Screenwriter John Byrum wanders all over the map, literally and figuratively, while weaving the stories of three couples bound for a $5,000 karaoke contest in Omaha, Neb.  Liv (Gwyneth Paltrow), an improbably ingenuous Las Vegas showgirl, tags along to be near her long-lost father, Ricky (‘80s pop star Huey Lewis), a professional singer who hustles amateurs in karaoke clubs. (Gosh, a karaoke hustler? Who knew?) Billy (Scott Speedman), a slacker cabdriver, is drafted into driving another karaoke pro, Suzi (Maria Bello), a hardboiled beauty who trades sexual favors for food, shelter and transportation. Todd (Paul Giamatti), a stressed-for-success sales executive, gets in touch with his inner wild man by singing on stage with his new best friend, Reggie (Andre Braugher), a philosophical hitchhiker with a violent past.

Karaoke is too easy a target for parody, so it’s much to the movie’s credit that it takes the contests almost as seriously as the contestants do. The playlist includes “Feeling Alright,” “Bette Davis Eyes” and, best of all, the Smokey Robinson standard, “Cruisin’.” But instead of just using the pop tunes to ironically comment on actions and emotions, Paltrow allows his characters to define themselves through the joy they find in performing on stage, singing to prerecorded music. Even the cynics in the group, Ricky and Suzi, are unabashedly delighted when they get their moments in the spotlight. And in the movie’s most effective scene, music is a magic that is at once unifying and liberating: Todd and Reggie gradually cement their friendship, and transcend their inhibitions, by joining forces for a spirited rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness.”

Whenever the music stops, however, the contrivances and complications take center stage, and Duets must rely on the charm of its cast to sustain interest. It helps that Gwyneth Paltrow (the director’s Oscar-winning daughter) is a surprisingly good singer, but it helps even more that Huey Lewis is a surprisingly adept actor. Paul Giamatti has some very funny moments, especially when his overworked Todd gets midway through a sales pitch before realizing he’s in the right hotel in the wrong city. But neither he nor Andre Braugher can fully suspend disbelief when Duets lurches into pathos for an unsatisfyingly violent ending. The movie is simply too lightweight to support such seriousness.