Gwyneth Paltrow is competent in her role but fails to shine

From ER to Felicity and Homicide: Life on the Street, this team is used to stylish realism and deftly underplayed scripts that would have worked here.

Duets is a stock television format with an ensemble cast slowly being drawn together, in this case through a common pursuit of karaoke and a contest prize of $5,000 (�3,491).

Where ER would have done it fast, Duets crawls through its long set-up. And where Homicide has sparse dialogue that tells you volumes, Duets assumes that you need cue cards just like the actors do.

Staccato

There are six main characters in Duets. Their slow pairing off, creating three main stories, is typical in television, but rare in films.

Paul Giamatti (left) with the film's shining star Andre Braugher

In this film the effect is disconnected. There's never a sense of why you're leaving one story for the next.

The joins are smoothed over by the singing which - as these characters are supposed to be competing for a top prize - is always good and sometimes exceptional.

A combination of tracks pre-recorded by the actors is seamlessly blended with the singing on set. Gwyneth Paltrow is easily a match for one-time pop singer Huey Lewis.

Andre Braugher gets an additional and elaborate electronic mixing of his own voice with that of background singer Arnold McCuller and the result is tremendous.

Unpredictable

The film's almost Blues Brothers-like end sequence is an ending that ought to mark out why film can have a greater scope than television.

Scott Speedman and Maria Bello play unlikely friends Billy and Suzi

While we don't especially care for any of the characters, we realise we're meant to, and that does make the final karaoke contest unpredictable.

It's difficult to see how the film can justify any one character beating the others and this should be the message of the film.

Yet the audience is left with a residue rather than a conclusion.

Duets is screened at the LFF on 14 November and opens in the UK on 1 December