Ratings
The Daily: 1.5 of 5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 42%
More on 'Joyful Noise'
IMDB
Official Website
“Joyful Noise” has an angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other and a lot of hot air blowing between.
Though one man, Todd Graff, is credited with writing and directing this musical/propagandist dramedy, it feels like the combined effort of several rooms full of people with varying degrees of wavering faith. Alternately alive with song and excruciatingly dull, “Joyful Noise” goes up and down enough times to put the congregation during a Catholic Mass to shame.
Good thing everyone here seems to be Baptist! “Joyful Noise” focuses on the Georgia-based Divinity Church Choir, which undergoes a shakeup after its director, Bernard (Kris Kristofferson), dies (though he later returns for a musical number from beyond the grave). His singin’ wife (Dolly Parton), who goes by G.G. (Gorgeous Grandma, of course) expects to ascend to his position, but is instead passed over in favor of Queen Latifah’s Vi Rose. Sniping ensues, though not as often as it should.
Interrupting the blessings of Parton-Latifah sparring are subplots involving Vi Rose’s estranged husband, Marcus (Jesse L. Martin), her prideful daughter Olivia (Keke Palmer) and her Asperger’s-afflicted son Walter (Dexter Darden), as well as G.G.’s nonthreatening “hoodlum” grandson/Olivia’s love interest Randy (Jeremy Jordan) and choir member Earla (Angela Grovey), whose reputation is tarnished for comedic effect when she sleeps with fellow singer Mr. Hsu (Francis Jue), who then dies in her bed.
In his attempt to copy Tyler Perry’s wholesome sin-giggle brand of entertainment, Graff has thrown so much against the wall that the resulting pile is barely worth rifling through. Full musical numbers come every 15 minutes or so, and since this is a movie about music, not a true musical, there’s no escapism. It amounts to watching people as they stand or sit there singing for what feel like eternal stretches. Sometimes they aren’t even in choir robes!
Parton gets to tote a shotgun and snort, “When foxes pack the jury box, the chicken’s always guilty,” and, “I’d call you stubborn, but it’d be an insult to mules,” but she also has to say, “Darn tootin’!” and, “You’re damn skippy.” She breaks even, at best. Latifah gets one of the most mind-boggling lines in recent cinematic history: “You a falling rock zone and anyone who stands too close to you is gonna have rocks fall on them, too!” At least it’s better than her prosaic proselytizing elsewhere, like, “God is our father and we have to have faith. Because we know that he loves us no matter what.”
The town from which this choir hails is full of foreclosures and sad, soup-eating people who really want the choir to win the National Joyful Noise Competition, as if that would help anything. Their anonymous idealism is matched by the virtually faceless choir, whose members each get a single trait if they’re lucky (one eats “pig and pickle mash,” while another repeats things people just said that she finds funny). The movie makes “Sister Act 2” look like Altman. The conflict between the progressive-minded choir and their pastor (Courtney B. Vance), who wants them to retain a traditional sound, makes the first “Sister Act,” now almost 20 years old, seem prophetic. It wasn’t.
That struggle plays out in the last of several climaxes, when, in order to beat a choir of showstopping children (children!), Vi Rose brings out the big guns in the form of Usher and Chris Brown songs rewritten to be worshipful. This requires an instantaneous upheaval of their stage show with fancy lighting and riser-shifting, and no one misses a beat. A deus ex machina for the sake of divinity? If only the rest of the movie were that hilarious.
The Daily: 1.5 of 5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 42%
More on 'Joyful Noise'
IMDB
Official Website
“Joyful Noise” has an angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other and a lot of hot air blowing between.
Though one man, Todd Graff, is credited with writing and directing this musical/propagandist dramedy, it feels like the combined effort of several rooms full of people with varying degrees of wavering faith. Alternately alive with song and excruciatingly dull, “Joyful Noise” goes up and down enough times to put the congregation during a Catholic Mass to shame.
Good thing everyone here seems to be Baptist! “Joyful Noise” focuses on the Georgia-based Divinity Church Choir, which undergoes a shakeup after its director, Bernard (Kris Kristofferson), dies (though he later returns for a musical number from beyond the grave). His singin’ wife (Dolly Parton), who goes by G.G. (Gorgeous Grandma, of course) expects to ascend to his position, but is instead passed over in favor of Queen Latifah’s Vi Rose. Sniping ensues, though not as often as it should.
Interrupting the blessings of Parton-Latifah sparring are subplots involving Vi Rose’s estranged husband, Marcus (Jesse L. Martin), her prideful daughter Olivia (Keke Palmer) and her Asperger’s-afflicted son Walter (Dexter Darden), as well as G.G.’s nonthreatening “hoodlum” grandson/Olivia’s love interest Randy (Jeremy Jordan) and choir member Earla (Angela Grovey), whose reputation is tarnished for comedic effect when she sleeps with fellow singer Mr. Hsu (Francis Jue), who then dies in her bed.
In his attempt to copy Tyler Perry’s wholesome sin-giggle brand of entertainment, Graff has thrown so much against the wall that the resulting pile is barely worth rifling through. Full musical numbers come every 15 minutes or so, and since this is a movie about music, not a true musical, there’s no escapism. It amounts to watching people as they stand or sit there singing for what feel like eternal stretches. Sometimes they aren’t even in choir robes!
Parton gets to tote a shotgun and snort, “When foxes pack the jury box, the chicken’s always guilty,” and, “I’d call you stubborn, but it’d be an insult to mules,” but she also has to say, “Darn tootin’!” and, “You’re damn skippy.” She breaks even, at best. Latifah gets one of the most mind-boggling lines in recent cinematic history: “You a falling rock zone and anyone who stands too close to you is gonna have rocks fall on them, too!” At least it’s better than her prosaic proselytizing elsewhere, like, “God is our father and we have to have faith. Because we know that he loves us no matter what.”
The town from which this choir hails is full of foreclosures and sad, soup-eating people who really want the choir to win the National Joyful Noise Competition, as if that would help anything. Their anonymous idealism is matched by the virtually faceless choir, whose members each get a single trait if they’re lucky (one eats “pig and pickle mash,” while another repeats things people just said that she finds funny). The movie makes “Sister Act 2” look like Altman. The conflict between the progressive-minded choir and their pastor (Courtney B. Vance), who wants them to retain a traditional sound, makes the first “Sister Act,” now almost 20 years old, seem prophetic. It wasn’t.
That struggle plays out in the last of several climaxes, when, in order to beat a choir of showstopping children (children!), Vi Rose brings out the big guns in the form of Usher and Chris Brown songs rewritten to be worshipful. This requires an instantaneous upheaval of their stage show with fancy lighting and riser-shifting, and no one misses a beat. A deus ex machina for the sake of divinity? If only the rest of the movie were that hilarious.
