‘Country Gold' Review: A Rising Star's Wild(ish) Night With a Legend

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Mickey Reece, a filmmaker from Oklahoma, drags an Oklahoma-born singer called Troyal – who answers to Garth – into this bizarre comedy.

By:

ET

Mickey Reece, a filmmaker and actor who has been active in the microbudget film industry since early 2000, is a prolific filmmaker. He has produced over 20 films. His latest film, 'Country Gold', is an unfinished -- or in some ways, over-baked -- shaggy dogs tale. It's a wheel-spinning, albeit with some odd integrity, exercise despite its surrealist homegrown touches.

Reece portrays a slack jawed country singer named Troyal Brux (pronounced Brooks) based on a real megastar. I don't understand why a film maker would bother to slam Garth Brooks, born Troyal Garth Brooks, whose days of stamping the zeitgeist have long passed in 2023.

Reece is also from Oklahoma like Brooks. This may explain the long-standing grudge. The story is that Troyal receives a letter inviting him to Nashville to meet with the country-western singer George Jones. (Played by Ben Hall who looks nothing like Jones)

The George Jones in this movie is a labored concoction. Tyler Mahan Coe, a podcaster, described the real Jones as "a haunted human being." Here, Jones is a voluble and quasi-avuncular character who takes Troyal for a medium wild night that includes booze cocaine, and massage.

This movie, shot mostly in black and white with some amusing animation (the scene where Troyal is reprimanded for ordering steak well-done in a quirkily comedic highlight), gets better as it drifts away from its realistic models into hazy American weirdness. The snobbish dismissiveness of the film's treatment of country music overshadows its interesting qualities.