All right, Hollywood. I give up.

Stop kicking me in the crotch with your The Art of Wars and your Urban Legends: Final Cuts. Don't stab me in the face with your Bring it Ons and your Baits. Is this month your ultimate checkmate move to keep me out of the theaters for good?

And what about this Bounce thing that's looming heavy on the horizon? The new trailer I just saw told us that Gwyneth Paltrow's husband died in a plane crash, and then Ben Affleck moved in to boink her, but little does she know that he had switched tickets for that doomed flight, and it should have been him who died and not her hubby. Wow! That's a good twist to have in the film! I'll have to see it now! Oh wait, now that I know the twist I don't have to see it, do I? That's like having that Twilight Zone episode start with a guy saying "Hey, the aliens sent us this cookbook called 'How to Serve Man'."

And I saw a poster for a movie, I swear I'm not making this up, called MVP: Most Valuable Primate. It's a monkey that plays hockey. Why do you hate me, Hollywood? The tears are starting to well up already... although this may be a sign that the movie industry is finally ready for the psychological thriller I've been working on entitled Dial M for Monkey.

I swear to God, I've reached the point where I'd rather break out the old tapes of Misfits of Science for entertainment than go to the cinema. Go, Johnny, go! Let's bolt!

Given the abysmal alternatives, for this week's review I opted to see Duets, the long lost Gwyneth Paltrow/Huey Lewis karaoke movie.

I knew only two things about this movie when I went in:
1. It stars Huey Lewis as a "Karaoke Hustler", whatever the hell that is, and
2. Those other catty film critics all bitched and moaned about what a lousy singer Gwyneth Paltrow is.

Coming out of the movie, I have only two things to say:
1. I want to be a Karaoke Hustler when I grow up, and
2. She's an actress, not a singer, dickweeds. Sure she's no Mel Torme, but I don't see any of you losers entering the World's First Online Karaoke Contest. So shut up.

Duets is amazingly good. I know I was amazed. I went in expecting nothing more than an afternoon in the air-conditioning and out of the sweltering valley heat, and what I got was a very well done film about six unrelated lost souls and how they are brought together by the common thread of a Japanese bar craze.

I think Duets is what Magnolia was trying to be. There were, in fact, only two crucial differences:
1. Duets had a running time that a normal human could sit through without a Swedish masseuse, and
2. At the end of Duets the plot lines were actually wrapped up, unlike in Magnolia where they just slammed into rolling credits with no sense of conclusion at all.

Take that Mark-Paul Gosselaar, or whatever your name is. Go make a special edition of Magnolia that doesn't suck.

The first character we meet in Duets is Huey Lewis, the infamous Karaoke Hustler. It turns out, oddly enough, that karaoke hustling works pretty much like any other hustle. He goes into a bar that is hosting a karaoke contest dressed like Michael Richards, talks shit to the best singer, makes a sizable bet, and then proceeds to get up on stage and rock the house Back to the Future style.

I generally make the call on what's a spoiler and what's not a spoiler by what's given away in the trailer. That being said, I guess I was out taking a pee all those times that I saw this one, because I was totally surprised when we find out, after it is firmly established that Huey is sporting a big 'ol stiffy for Gwyneth, that he is her long lost father.

That brings us to an interesting point. As every single damn movie critic in the guild has mentioned, Gwyneth Paltrow is only in this movie at all because it was directed by her father, Bruce Paltrow. That just makes all of her "sexy" scenes turn disturbing, doesn't it? Can you imagine what it was like on the set?

"Okay honey, that was good, but I was wondering if when you're walking away if you could try to clench your sweet little buttocks a little tighter. And I thought I told wardrobe to put you in a shorter skirt! Oh, that's a belt? Okay then, it's fine. All right, on this take, why don't you try licking your lips and grinding your crotch into the microphone stand? Yeah, just like mommy does. Good! Okay, action!"

It's the creepiest casting choice this side of that Aerosmith video where Liv Tyler does a striptease. If you're taking the SAT, and you get the question "Liv Tyler is to the video for "Crazy" as Gwyneth Paltrow is to (blank)," the answer is C. Duets.

But enough about that. The Huey/Gwyn plot was by far the lamest part of the movie. In fact, were it not for them screwing it up, this could have very easily been a five chainsaw movie. The rest of it kicked ass.

Like the storyline with Paul Giametti. Upon reflection, I think that he was really the star of this movie. His story was the most interesting and captivating by a long shot. But because Gwyn is a sexy starlet, and Paul suffers from acute physical weirdness, she gets to have top billing.

Anyway, like all movies that I like, this review has turned out to be short and bad.

And when a misreview turns out this lame, you know the movie is probably something good. You may as well go see it. There's nothing else out right now, and I'll bet you don't have any tapes of the Misfits of Science to fall back on.

We figured it out. The misinformants now know where this movie fits into the grand scheme of things.

Duets is an alternate universe version of American Beauty.

No really, listen.

Okay, did you notice how the incredibly hot Duets Maria Bello looked just like a much younger version of American Beauty Annette Bening?

No? Okay then, how about how Kiersten Warren (Paul Giamatti's wife in Duets) looked just like an older version of Mena Suvari?

Didn't notice that either? Get some glasses, blindy! Er... okay, how about this...

The whole point of American Beauty was that life in the suburbs sucks. That there is no fate worse than being boring and having a nice house, a wife that doesn't pay enough attention to you, and a kid who thinks you're a loser.

Conversely, Duets says that even though another Pleasant Valley Sunday here in status symbol land is frustrating, stressful, routine, and thankless, and least you're not in an actual prison being raped in the shower and smacked around by your five hundred pound cellmate for cryin' out loud! Stop whining and enjoy your good life, bitch.

It reminds me of this hippy-chick performance artist who came to my college once. She did this whole interpretive story and dance where she talked about how miserable her life was because she grew up in the suburbs and her house was just like all of her neighbors' houses, and her mom wore high heels and pearls and baked cookies while dad smoked a pipe and mowed the lawn wearing a fishing hat and a polo shirt.

When it was all over I just wanted to slap that stupid unappreciative snob across her hemp-scented face.

Your life sounds awful, lady. Oh, I'd like you to meet my friend Uuluuglu the exchange student. He was chosen to come to this country because the rest of his class had already been slaughtered by guerrilla rebels. All of his clothes are hand me downs from his older sister who died of a lethal combination of malnutrition and gingivitis. The only reason ol' Uuluuglu even stayed alive long enough to sneak across the border under the cover of darkness and a hail of gunfire was because he ate her remains for energy. So don't talk to me about how you could have turned out to be a productive member of society if your mom had bought you that Debbie Gibson tape you wanted, okay?

That's one of the things that I thought was so great about Duets. Giamatti spends the whole time whining about how he's "trapped" in sales, but by the end of the movie he comes to realize that there are worse things than success at the price of your free spirit.

And speaking of free spirits, I haven't even touched on Maria Bello... although I would very much like to. Rrrrrowwww...

Her big character arc is that she's a sexually exploitative manipulator who gets what she wants by tossing around oral sex like midgets at a rodeo. So what happens to her arrangement with the cab driver at the end of the movie?

I mean, he's taking her across the country because she's being "very nice" to him. At the end of the movie, she's realizing that she's better than all that. That she doesn't need to leave lipstick rings around sticky-uppy objects to succeed in life. So where does that leave their arrangement? Is he just taking her to California out of the goodness of his heart and not of his pants?

Actually, that doesn't seem too far fetched. We just keep seeing over and over again that the cab driver's heart is as pure as a statue of that little Pepsi girl made of Ivory soap. Even knowing that he's getting his dolphin waxed in a hotel every night, he still comes off like a Saint with extremely clean plumbing.

And who else is a not-sleeping-with-Tom-Jones Saint? Why Gwyn! I'll bet they hook up at the end! But not before the beginnings of their pure sweet love are ruined by Miss Rocket Polisher screwing it all up by coming in and saying "Okay taxi boy, let's get today's hummer over with so that I can get some sleep." D'oh! You're not pure, taxi boy! You're a pig!

I give bonus points to Duets for doing neither of these incredibly predictable things. And speaking of things that don't happen, they also never tell us who won the big karaoke contest. We theorize that the proceeds were donated to the National Association for the Advancement of Black Singing Criminals who Taste True Freedom through an Insane Dumpy White Guy and Are Then Shot.

Anyway, we're led to believe that the taxi boy hooks up with Gwyn at some point after the movie ends, but were also tempted to believe that there are sparks of a meaningful relationship between him and Miss Pole Varnisher.

You get to leave the theater both wondering exactly what's going to happen between them, and picturing a very good looking theoretical three way.

Duets has something for everybody.