There was potential there, potential to make a movie about characters who were fundamentally disoriented and spinning off in strange directions, and it was intriguing, for a few minutes, anyway. I was enjoying Duets until two horrible things happened. First, Gwyneth Paltrow opened her mouth. We first see Paltrow walking down a staircase, wearing white tights, her hair parted fetchingly, her face looking angelic, and then she spoke and ruined the illusion. He sings, not too terribly badly, and the movie moves on from there, headed in the general direction of hell.
Duets is a bad movie, and all the worse for raising the audience's expectations.
After the promising opening, Duets turns out to be nothing but a series of off-key false notes. Duets tries to tell the stories of three couples heading inevitably towards a karaoke tournament in Omaha, and bungles each one of them. The first story is marred by bad acting. They're a father and a daughter who have never met, don't have much in common, and aren't given any good lines. Lewis can't act worth beans, naturally, and Paltrow's basically phoning in her performance of a whiny teenager.