The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Good film similar in structure to Love Actually. It has the same main plot issues in that each subplot does not get fully fleshed out, however, that is easily made up in the range of stories and subsequently, then number of viewers that can relate. To be honest, I believe the writers did well enough that most folks can easily relate to more than one of the subplots. There was some sub par acting, but those performances were carried by the expected excellence of Paul Giamatti and Andre Braugher. As fantastic as their performances were, they were not the sole reason it gets 8 out of 10.This film will make you feel; So, by rule, it gets 8 out of 10 stars.

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.

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 ****

Not according to this poorly paced, melodramatic movie that just never goes anywhere. I had it recorded, so I thought I'd give it a try, and no matter how long I watched, it just didn't get any better. It tries so hard to be meaningful, but I didn't care about any character in this film. People giving it 10s? I think they must find soap operas profound, too. For the rest of us, the 5.7 average this movie has is probably too high. It's at most a 5 (but I can't give it that), and that's because the cast is decent and the production value is high B movie. If only the writing or directing were any good. But they aren't... :(