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IN SHORT: If your toes aren't tapping by movie's end, you're just as paralyzed as Cranky used to be. [Rated PG-13 for some language including a sexual reference. 118minutes]

Long time readers know that Cranky's neck has been broken three times (starting in 1988) and that we've been para and quad and two other kind of paralyzed that don't have special names. Keep any outraged comments about the summary line to your self.

The term "Joyful Noise" has always meant, at least in our life span, Gospel music. So, yes, a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn sits down to a review a feast of a gospel music filled movie. Here's a fact, dear readers: Cranky's first career was in rock radio. We happen to like the two tons of fun usually found stomping the risers singing gospel music as seen in the film Joyful Noise (though the film's choir is way short of two tons). For writer/director Todd Graff, the decision to apply gospel stylings to rock music (remember, Cranky has no idea if this happens in real life) makes for some great music, all of which fights like the dickens when necessary film things like plot and story insist on sticking their neck into things. Likewise, a decent story is incessantly interrupted by that rock posing as gospel music. We thought, perhaps, this was Graff's first film. It is his third and it just demonstrates how hard making a musical (traditional or, in this case, a mish-mash of songs that integrate with the plot and flat out foot stomping performances) film can be.

Any critic who stopped there would have you thinking that Joyful Noise is a terrible film. Cranky isn't stopping "there".

Pacashau, Georgia is not a very large town. It has a main street which appears to be no more than two blocks long and it has a church with one of those choirs Cranky just expressed admiration for. In fact, the Pacashau Sacred Divinity Church Choir, under the direction of Bernie Sparrow (Kris Kristofferson) whose wife G.G. (Dolly Parton) arranges each number, has made it to the regional finals of the gospel "Joyful Noise" competition four years running, Each year the choir is soundly defeated by a church from Detroit. In the competition that begins Joyful Noise, the defeat is physically deadly as it is emotionally deadening, as Bernie is felled by a heart attack in the middle of a performance.

Post funeral and mourning, G.G. expects that she will be named to lead the choir. Pastor Dale (Courtney B. Vance) sits the widow Sparrow down in his office and gently drops that bomb that the church's board of directors has chosen the choir's lead singer, Vi Rose Hill (Dana "Queen" Latifah) to take the choir in a new direction -- back to gospel standards. Given that the Sparrow family -- the richest in the town -- has been financing the choir for years, well, let's just say that the Pastor is either really stupid, or has other irons in the fire now that Vi's husband Marcus (Jesse L. Martin) up and joined the Army at age 30 and is nowhere to be seen . . .

Those who have read to this point, and recognize the names of the actors may sense a huge racial blow up coming. If Joyful Noise had gone in that direction, we can't say what would have happened. It chooses to follow the traditional vs. revamped rock music as gospel route, and balances it with the rivalry between G.G. (which, apparently is a nickname meaning "gorgeous grandma") and Vi as the former's grandson Randy (Jeremy Jordan) arrives in town and falls in love, hard, for the latter's daughter Olivia (Keke Palmer). To get closer to the girl, Randy joins the choir. Mama Vi brings the hammer down, hard. G.G. has her own reservations, which will probably make it into the television commercial. It's the same kind of countrified philosophy that has filled all the characters Dolly Parton has played on the big screen and keeps the film from getting mired in reality.

Think of it this way. There's a lot of stuff filling Joyful Noise, a film that could not have existed even a mere twenty five years ago. No one would have believed a racially and culturally mixed church could have existed anywhere with everyone, for the most part, getting along. A cross-racial romance would be territory for heavy handed drama not the light romance of a rock turned gospel musical, though there is a young tough called Manny (Paul Woolfolk) who is resentful of Randy's presence and brings a wee bit of danger to the story That and a Gibson guitar so you can guess where that could go. Keeping the film light is a close to hilarious subplot involving the tortured romantic endeavors of the choir's choreographer Earla (Angela Grovey). We'll not wreck the fun of that story line.

Those expecting a Snidely Whiplash type villain to add some real danger to the story will be disappointed. Then again, you guys aren't right in the head if you lay out close to fifteen bucks to see something you've already "figured out" ahead of time, right? There's enough emotional stuff going in Joyful Noise; between the kiddies' romantic experiments and (their) parental efforts to keep families together and bills paid to drive the story from song to song.

Truth. More important is the music, which helps to define the relationship between Olivia and Randy and/or Manny; which brings Olivia's brother Walter (Dexter Darden) out of the shell something called Asperger's Syndrome -- Randy offers piano lessons to the boy, who parades around in sunglasses looking like a Steve Wonder clone. Music Producer Mervynn Warren's selections for the film run the gamut of pop hits from the 1970s to now; something for the teen demographic and us older generation critics. By the time Joyful Noise is over, hard core conservative churches with choirs will realize that the simple substitution of "Oh Lord" for "ooh , baby" or "Jesus" for any given name in a love song will allow their choirs access to decades of rock 'n' roll hit songs that, once upon a time, would have been decried as "The Devil's music," while stacks of vinyl LPs and 45s were burned in bonfires.

We mean songs by Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Usher, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Billy Preston and more. Add some newbies from Ms. Parton and you get a film worthy of the outrageous costs of the uber-bucket of popcorn and reservoir-sized sodas now served at your local cineplex.

Rock 'n' Roll really is good for the soul . . .

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Joyful Noise, he would have paid . . .

See it in a theater, folks. Joyful Noise stuffs the screen with color (not like that...) and you really want a sound system blasting so loud that the neighbors would be complaining if you were at home watching a DVD release six months from now.

Every viewer of the right age will, within ten minutes or so, miss Michael Jackson more than they may have in a very long time.

	Click to buy films by Todd Graff
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