“Joyful Noise,” sort of a “Glee”-meets-gospel music choral competition musical, makes a pleasant enough racket. A cheerful crowd-pleaser that rarely breaks formula, it’s the big screen equivalent of a sloppy smooch from your over-affectionate aunt over the holidays.
You grimace. You stand there and take it. And you don’t let anybody see you grin afterward.
Writer-director Todd Graff, who specializes in this sort of cheerful, campy musical (“Bandslam,” “Camp”), lured Dolly Parton back from the surgically altered wilderness and paired her with Queen Latifah. They play two big belters with competing visions of how their integrated, uplifting small-town church choir can win the big Joyful Noise choir contest.
Will they wear the robes, keep the showmanship to a minimum and perform unadulterated gospel pop? Or will they get flashy, adapt mainstream love songs of the past and rock the house?
You remember “Sister Act.” You know the answer.
Vi Rose (Latifah) takes over as choir director when their longtime director (Kris Kristofferson) has a heart attack and dies after a performance. G.G. (Parton), his widow and the choir’s big financial benefactor, isn’t happy. But she grits her teeth and carries on, delivering homespun wisecracks along the way.
Graff delights in those, and scatters Southern similes through the script — zingers delivered by Dolly and the other Sacred Divinity Church choir members.
“You’re so country, you’ve been married three times and you’ve still got the same in-laws!”
“Don’t you look as happy as a puppy waggin’ two tails!”
And this Vi Rose warning: “There’s always free cheese in the mouse trap!”
She drops that one on her pretty soloist daughter, Olivia (Keke Palmer). Olivia needs to hear it because the boys are noticing her, especially G.G.’s randy grandson, Randy (Jeremy Jordan). He has talent that only comes out when he joins the choir to hit on Olivia.
Then there’s Vi Rose’s other kid, Walter (Dexter Darden), whose Asperger’s syndrome takes the form of an obsession with songs of one-hit wonders.
Graff’s script is a cut-and-paste-from-the-zeitgeist affair, from the movie disease of choice (Asperger’s) to the hard times — Pacashau, Ga., home of the church, is a dying town suffering in a down economy. Vi Rose essentially is a single mom because her husband is in the Army. Graff made his script sellable by tilting it toward the younger characters.
What he fails to do in this “big game” formula film is to give the story a villain, someone or something to overcome and root against. He rubs the edges off his two leads, who harmonize on stage and barely set off sparks in their arguments off stage. The parent-child fights feel forced.
The choir’s big rivals in choral competition are underdeveloped, and the long-suffering pastor (Courtney B. Vance, of course) isn’t that much of a threat to “shut down the choir.”
Graff gave his PG comedy a PG-13 edge by peppering the script with profanity and winking at premarital sex.
The music — which includes gospel takes on “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Man in the Mirror” and Sly and the Family Stone’s “Higher” – makes this a fine showcase for the voices. Everybody gets his or her solo.
In a movie marketplace that embraced a perfectly awful exorcism film last weekend, you’d hope Keke, Dolly and the Queen could lift their voices and lure in the faithful.
This cheese doesn’t come with a mousetrap. ‘JOYFUL NOISE’
* *
Cast: Queen Latifah, Dolly Parton, Keke Palmer, Courtney B. Vance, Jeremy Jordan
Director: Todd Graff
Running time: 1:55
Rated: PG-13; language, including a sexual reference
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