Joyful Noise | Film review

A faith-based entertainment with crossover aspirations, Joyful Noise owes a clear debt to Sister Act. Like the Whoopi vehicle, it concerns a church choir doing gospel covers of pop songs. But where it really worships is at the altar of Glee. The big-voiced members of the film’s multiracial Georgia congregation dust off Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” turn Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” into a reverent hymn and, in the big showstopper, mash up Sly and the Family Stone and Usher. As with Ryan Murphy’s runaway-smash series, the song selections cater to a wide demographic. So too does the eager-to-please plot, which often seems to buckle under the weight of too many characters, conflicts and life lessons.

Those pumped for a proper showdown between Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton may leave disappointed. As competing members of the choir, the two divas trade pointed barbs—as well as some airborne entrées in a late-film restaurant confrontation—but their rivalry is eclipsed by countless subplots. There’s a romance between Latifah’s combative daughter (Akeelah and the Bee’s Keke Palmer) and Parton’s cocky grandson (Jeremy Jordan); a little brother with Asperger’s; an absentee soldier father; a dead husband who returns for a fantasy duet; and a lot of boarded-up businesses to remind us that this is, on some tangential level, a film about keeping the faith during dire economic straits. The only performer capable of making her voice heard over all this noise—most of it more nattering than joyful—is Latifah. She wields withering put-downs and inspirational homilies with equal aplomb.