Let’s Make a Joyful Noise!

Joy­ful Noise opened up in theater’s almost two weeks ago.

Quick sum­mary: It’s Sis­ter Act 2, mixed with Glee, with a lit­tle Romeo and Juliet thrown in there. If you like music, and you like a good story, you’ll like this movie.

My full review: The wife and I went out to see it for our date night. Star­ring Dolly Par­ton, I knew I would like it, but it sur­prised even me on how good it was.

Ini­tially I was wor­ried that Amy may not like this movie, but only go to appease me, because she knows I love Dolly. But at the end, even she was talk­ing about how much she actu­ally enjoyed it and I could hear the enthu­si­asm in her voice as she told oth­ers about the movie.

The rivalry between Queen Lat­i­fah and Dolly is just enough to bring some humor to the movie. But it is a sort of rivalry that is a lit­tle rem­i­nis­cence of the rivalry of Wheezer and the dad in Steel magnolia’s. They can’t stand each other, but you know deep down inside they are very fond of each other.

Not only is there funny parts in this movie, but there are a few ten­der moments that can bring on a few tears if your not care­ful, and the grow­ing ten­sion between Q.L. and Keke Palmer cre­ates some very dra­matic and tense scenes. These two really deliver a pow­er­ful performance.

While Dolly isn’t an actress (she’s admit­ted that in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy), she is a “char­ac­ter” and she plays her char­ac­ter well. She has some nice one-liners in there and some touch­ing moments that I thing she per­forms nicely and at times very powerful.

There is a few side story lines with some of the sup­port­ing cast. They’re light sto­ries, but if you don’t pay atten­tion, you may miss out on how some of those story’s close out at the end. (For instance the choir mem­ber who talks with Q.L. on the bus to the com­pe­ti­tion, hasn’t been feel­ing the “spirit”, so in the med­ley he has a sort of reawak­en­ing and has a lit­tle dance scene that seems out of place if you didn’t catch that first con­ver­sa­tion.) But my favorite story line is one of the female choir mem­bers and her love life.

The music is great! From some uptempo Gospels, hip hop rejoic­ing, a nice bal­lad or two and some retool­ing of pop songs they all leave you feel­ing good and in many cases ready to move! Dolly wrote a few of the songs in the movie and they hold up well with the rest.

If your look­ing for a movie with a good story (even though this kind of story has been told before) I highly rec­om­mend it.

If my his­tory serves me, I believe this was ini­tially sup­posed to be a TV show that Dolly had been shop­ping around for a few years, but I think it does well open­ing as a movie. I could see this being a fun sit­com though.

[tube]http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR_vDzDNyE[/tube]