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]