Joyful Noise (5/10)

Joyful Noise

This starts out with a rollicking concert with wonderful singing and dancing by the choir that includes Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah. For the next 45 minutes it is filled with terrific music and I thought I was seeing a real winner.

Then, however, it makes the music secondary to an uninvolving story of a love affair between Queen Latifah's daughter, Keke Palmer, and Dolly's grandson, Jeremy Jordan, a romance that is notable for an astonishing lack of chemistry between the two.

The purpose of the film seems to be to send a message about multi-racial romance because the two main romances in the film are multi-racial. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but they are so in-your-face that one worries about exiting the film with a concussion from being so bombarded with director Todd Graff's Point of View. Except for Dolly and her husband, Kris Kristofferson, who dies in the first minute of the film, and Queen Latifah and her husband, who is pretty much absent from the film until the last minute, there are no couples that are both white or both black or both Asian. Every romance is mixed.

This obvious attempt to send a message is a shame because the music is really terrific. But when the middle of the film diverts from the choir and the singing and the music into what comes across as mawkish preaching, the joy of the music and the other moral principles in the film are pretty much lost. I really don't care what the message is, or whether I agree or disagree, when a filmmaker obstinately thrusts your face in his message for almost two hours, it becomes distasteful. It is particularly inappropriate when he has lured you into his theater advertising one thing and then concentrates on manipulating your opinion about something entirely different. This could have been a good movie about music and a choir working to win a title, like The School of Rock (2003), which didn't have any subtheme and contained 35 songs. It was mostly about music.

Although this film contains 27 songs, after the first 45 minutes, I found myself fighting to stay awake. Unfortunately, it was a fight I won.

Run time 104 minutes

OK for children

Tony Medley is a film critic accredited by the Motion Picture Association of America. His reviews may be read in several newspapers as well as on Rottentomatoes.com, the Movie Review Query Engine, mrqe.com, and at www.tonymedley.com. In addition, he’s written numerous newspaper and magazine articles for publications like The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Magazine, The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and Good Housekeeping Magazine.

Tony Medley is a Silver Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), an ACBL-certified Director, and the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Bridge. With over 100,000 copies in print, it is the best selling basic bridge book. He is also the author of UCLA Basketball: The Real Story, available on Kindle, and Sweaty Palms: The Neglected Art of Being Interviewed, first published in 1978 and now in its third edition with over half a million copies in print, the first book ever written about the job interview for the interviewee.