BEFORE: I still have to decide if this is going to be the last year of this project. Once I hit movie #1,300 I'm going to stop for the year. Assuming the Mayans are wrong, I'll have to decide whether to start up again come January 1 - but I fear that I'll be left with a bunch of straggler films, my ability to arrange them into a coherent chain will be gone, and for me that's half of the fun. Oh, I'll still have the Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock and James Bond chains to get through, but after that, my best idea so far is to announce each film as a Follow-Up to some previous film in the countdown. Who knows, maybe in January I'll have another vision of how to organize what's left. Does anyone know TCM's arrangement theme for next year's "31 Days of Oscar" programming yet?
Tonight's choice is a no-brainer, following up last night's film, with a large portion of the cast carrying over. And since this takes place in a Catholic school, I think, it's my link to the start of Back-To-School week. Though, taking another look at the films on the list, I have an odd feeling the theme's going to drift a bit, which has been known to happen.
THE PLOT: The sisters come back to Deloris's show to get her back as Sister Mary Clarence to teach music to a group of students in their parochial school which is doomed for closure.
AFTER: Well, if last night's film seemed a little formulaic, this one puts it to shame. The theme of putting together a show to save the school/community center/local fire department goes WAY back to the days of the Andy Hardy films, and possibly even before that. Last night the gospel/soul hybrid arrangements were enough to get people to come back to church, but tonight the formation of a choir has to save a school.
A more cynical man than myself might point out that there would probably be no connection between how a school performs in the All-state choir competition and having enough funds to keep the doors open. Similarly, I might point out that the people who make decisions about which schools need to stay open in a community are probably not the same people who would be judging the statewide "Battle of the Choruses". But why let reality ruin a story?
It bothers me more when a musical performer is brought to a school to teach a music class, and after getting the unruly kids in line, and getting them to repeat some silly daily affirmation, it's the kids who have to suggest to the music teacher that maybe they could do something involving music, you know, since it's music class after all. And since that was the entire reason she was brought there.
Much of the dialogue here seems improvised, unfortunately, and that, combined with the threadbare plot, makes the script feel sort of half-written. And the other half was cribbed from those old "Let's put on a SHOW!" talkies, or perhaps "The Bad News Bears" (or any of the films that stole from that, like "Hardball" or "The Mighty Ducks"...) But they forgot to include the standard shot of a bunch of referees flipping through a massive rulebook, and ultimately determining that there's no rule against a showgirl leading a high-school choir...
Plot elements are introduced and then forgotten, like the real estate deal that the stuffed-shirt administrator mentioned in passing. It felt like the screenwriter meant to put in something about the nuns finding secret documents in his desk about a shell company that would profit from tearing down the school and putting up condos or drilling for oil or something, and then he got distracted and never got around to writing that scene.
No worries, we'll just have teens rap, nuns dance, and throw in some monks doing the same, and everyone will feel entertained.
There's also a certain form of delusion that comes from believing that everything will fall into place if one can just arrange the perfect medley or mash-up. I do enjoy hearing songs mixed together, but that only goes so far. I spent some time in the 90's running two (failed) a cappella groups and I've heard a lot of songs arranged a lot of different ways - but none of them had the power to change minds or public policy. At the most, people would just say, "Oh, what a clever arrangement!" and then go on with their lives.
(ASIDE: Years ago, with help from my mother, I arranged a massive medley of 7 Monkees songs, ending with an intertwining of "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Last Train to Clarksville", and "I'm a Believer" sung as a fugue. I could hear it in my head, and I had to get it into sheet music form before it drove me mad. It was perhaps a bit ambitious for my 5-person vocal group to handle, and as a result it's never been performed publicly. If any 10-20 person groups are interested, give me a shout.)
Starring Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy, Mary Wickes, Wendy Makkena (all carrying over from "Sister Act"), plus James Coburn (last seen in "Young Guns II"), Michael Jeter (last seen in "Miller's Crossing"), Sheryl Lee Ralph (last seen in "The Mighty Quinn"), future Fugees star Lauryn Hill, Jennifer Love Hewitt (last seen in "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties"), and cameos from Robert Pastorelli (last seen in "Be Cool"), Pat Crawford Brown and Ellen Albertini Dow.
RATING: 3 out of 10 permission slips
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