AllMovie

Peter Bogdanovich's film about a quartet of aspiring country music songwriters is a standard career melodrama with an excellent soundtrack for country fans. Two young women (Samantha Mathis and Sandra Bullock) and two young men (River Phoenix and Dermot Mulroney) arrive in Nashville to audition for a spot at the famed Bluebird Café. The film charts their romances and struggles to succeed in the world of country music. The last feature film of actor Phoenix, it has a perfunctory quality which suggests the filmmakers' lack of knowledge or interest in the idiom they're attempting to depict. The dialogue is lifeless and generic, as though these could be any ambitious kids trying to break into any competitive business. Phoenix, who was obviously in trouble at this point, gives a pallid, inchoate performance as the most clearly talented of the four. However, Mathis, Bullock, Mulroney, and K.T. Oslin, as a no-nonsense critic, all have their moments.