Some of the music contained in "Joyful Noise" is pretty good. Which is a good thing. Otherwise there wouldn't be much - actually, there really wouldn't be anything - to make this movie worth watching.
Revolving around a church choir from small town Georgia looking to win the national "Joyful Noise" competition in Los Angeles and having to overcome a lot of obstacles to do it, the story - to be blunt - is shallow and predictable. There are tensions within the choir (mostly represented by the tensions between the two lead characters Vi Rose and Gi Gi (Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton) who simply don't like each other. As the movie opens, Gi Gi's husband (played very briefly by Kris Kristoffersson) is the choir master, but he has a heart attack during a performance and dies. Gi Gi wants to take over from him, but the church pastor chooses Vi Rose. Add to that a romance between Olivia (Keke Palmer) and Randy (Jeremy Jordan) - Vi Rose's daughter and Gi Gi's grandson, and assorted other issues that arise, and what you have left is one muddled plot.
For a movie that revolved around a church choir, the religious content here seemed very forced and artificial to me, as if those who wrote it just figured they had to throw "God," "Lord," "Jesus" and "Hallelujah" in every five minutes just to make the point that it's about a CHURCH choir. In short, there was very little to this that would cause me to recommend it. It reminded me a lot of a movie made a few years ago called "The Fighting Temptations," which had a very similar plot and was equally bad. Let's be honest. There's really only been one decent movie made about a church choir - and that was "Sister Act." This one has a few good and entertaining musical pieces, but is totally lacking in story. (2/10)
Revolving around a church choir from small town Georgia looking to win the national "Joyful Noise" competition in Los Angeles and having to overcome a lot of obstacles to do it, the story - to be blunt - is shallow and predictable. There are tensions within the choir (mostly represented by the tensions between the two lead characters Vi Rose and Gi Gi (Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton) who simply don't like each other. As the movie opens, Gi Gi's husband (played very briefly by Kris Kristoffersson) is the choir master, but he has a heart attack during a performance and dies. Gi Gi wants to take over from him, but the church pastor chooses Vi Rose. Add to that a romance between Olivia (Keke Palmer) and Randy (Jeremy Jordan) - Vi Rose's daughter and Gi Gi's grandson, and assorted other issues that arise, and what you have left is one muddled plot.
For a movie that revolved around a church choir, the religious content here seemed very forced and artificial to me, as if those who wrote it just figured they had to throw "God," "Lord," "Jesus" and "Hallelujah" in every five minutes just to make the point that it's about a CHURCH choir. In short, there was very little to this that would cause me to recommend it. It reminded me a lot of a movie made a few years ago called "The Fighting Temptations," which had a very similar plot and was equally bad. Let's be honest. There's really only been one decent movie made about a church choir - and that was "Sister Act." This one has a few good and entertaining musical pieces, but is totally lacking in story. (2/10)