George & Tammy review: This faithful biopic starts to lose its sparkle-Keith Watson-Entertainment – Metro

Caption: George and Tammy – Unit
Photographer: Dana Hawley
Provider: Dana Hawley
Source: MTVE
Copyright: All Rights Reserved to MTVE
(Credits: Dana Hawley)

In great swathes of the USA all you hear on the car radio is country music.

And in those great swathes George Jones was, in his cotton pickin’ heyday, bigger than Madonna. Or Prince. Or Taylor Swift. You get the idea.

But in this country, unless you’re talking to a diehard country fan, you’re more likely to get a George Who? in response to the title George And Tammy.

Here it should really be called Tammy And George, given that Tammy Wynette is much the bigger name, thanks to huge 1960s hits Stand By Your Man and D.I.V.O.R.C.E, hits that still make golden oldies playlists.

So, apologies to any George Jones fans out there, but a lack of intimate knowledge of the great man actually gives this faithful if rather strung out biopic series a leg up.

You come to the story of George and Tammy’s tempestuous romance fresh –  though, truth be told, you know it’s never going to have a happy ending, such is Jones’s obvious appetite for self-destruction.

The keynote line here is ‘I believe you have to live a song to make it good’, delivered by Jessica Chastain’s Tammy early on and, given Tammy’s predilection for catch-in-the-throat songs about heartbreak and loneliness, it’s a roadmap for her and George’s stormy six years together.

They got together when, both married to others, her star was on the rise while his was on the wane, so the story plays out like A Star Is Born, the yee-haw remix, with Chastain tremendous as the ambitious, faux-naive Wynette, a woman with her eyes on the chart-topping prize.

She looks uncannily like Tammy, with a voice to match.

Whether Michael Shannon is a true George Jones is a tougher call. But he gives the legend a world-weary charm that just about has you convinced about his apparently irresistible charisma.

The trouble is, once G&T have got together, the story loses a lot of its sparkle.

Still, with a soundtrack sprinkled with old country standards, you can twang your way to the bitter end.

George and Tammy is available to stream on Paramount Plus from December 5 at 8pm.

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