If karaoke were an Olympic sport, this American entry would finish out of the medal round. Way out. If Disney wants to call this a comedy, then alligator wrestling must be an Olympic sport. There’s not much to laugh at, and, based on it’s measly $2 million opening weekend figure (in only fifty-plus markets, some of you will be fortunate), it’s way out of the competition. The rest of the country will have to wait for the home video release. If it’s playing at a theater near you, wait it out till it pops up on free TV.

It’s paltry Paltrow. Bruce as director and daughter Gwyneth as one of the stars, although the parallel story lines subjects her role to a fraction of the 112-minute running time. It’s been eighteen years since his last commercial feature, the dreary A Little Sex, but it does share the same reaction: What the heck is a made-for-TV film doing in movie theaters? With a career firmly set behind the little screen, he’d be better off looking for his next holy grail. He found it before with The White Shadow and, one of my all-time favorites, the marvelous hospital drama St. Elsewhere. Let’s pray he finds gold again. Unfortunately, with Duets everything’s leaden, especially Mr. Paltrow’s direction and the clichéd characters from screenwriter John Byrum (Valentino, Sphinx, The Razor’s Edge, and a handful of other non-entities).

The story pairs off threadbare characters who will eventually converge in Omaha, Nebraska for a $5,000 Grand Prize Karaoke Contest (press materials: “their lives intertwine, revealing the funny, raucous world of Karaoke bars and chain hotels that link the interstates of Middle America.”) I heard one big sigh after another watching this unravel (alright, that was me), but the other ten people in the audience, scientifically polled and probed after the screening, confirmed that there was nothing funny or raucous in Duets. They preferred the post-viewing probing 9-to-1.

There are some seasoned actors in the cast, particularly Andre Braugher and Paul Giamatti, but they have horrible, cardboard-thin characters written for them (oops, everybody does). The score card has gruffy Ricky Dean (singer/actor Huey Lewis) as a veteran karaoke hustler (honest!) stinging smaller bar singers with his poker face. When told that a long-estranged acquaintance has died, he inherits their only common possession: a daughter/third-generation Vegas showgirl (Paltrow) he’s never know. She’s sweet and sheltered; he’s a loner. They both have good voices at least.

Next up: frazzled traveling sales executive Todd Woods (Giamatti), who experiences burnout on the road (grievous angst for flaunting environmental laws and allowing a theme park water slide to wipe out the breeding grounds for some endangered turtles) and at home (wife Candy can’t talk now: she’s busy on the Internet; and he’s a ghost to their two uncommunicative kids). It’s a sad imitation of Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham character in American Beauty. Very sad. Supposedly out in search of a pack of cigarettes (so what if he doesn’t smoke: it’s good for a running gag), he gets drugged and confused by a karaoke singer before taking up the microphone himself at the Pacific Inn hotel bar and belting out Hello, It’s Me. Oh boy, he’s hooked now! He picks up hitchhiking ex-con Reggie Kane (Braugher) and they hit the road stalling, mostly because none of the dumps they visit (caution: another running gag ahead) are willing to take his 800,000 frequent flyer miles for a free night’s stay. These new-found friends have some of the darker moments in the film, but I suspect Braugher couldn’t have had a gloomier time embodying his convict-with-a-heart-of-tarnished-gold role.

Who else: Felicity’s Scott Speedman is here as Billy, the half-owner of an aging station wagon cab. When Billy find his balding partner in bed with Billy’s girlfriend, a reformed lesbian, he hops in his taxi and heads out of town. Destination? None other than the meaning of life. Instead he finds cute Suzi Loomis, an ex-waitress who offers a male-oriented oral barter payment plan in lieu of cash. Good for a paint job, hotel room, or trip to California.

This drivel is about as upscale as a laminated karaoke menu. It’s a shaggy dog story that’s a dog. Is there a market for this kind of small-potatoes karaoke kompetition in an age where Regis gives away millions three times each week. No. And that’s my final answer.

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