Joyful Noise is an odd movie that defies several conventions of modern film-making. It talks about God far more than a Hollywood film but Jesus far less than a Christian film. A white man comes to the rescue of a black family, something that has been taboo in Hollywood for a generation. A young black woman spurns a black man for a white man. These things just don’t happen in movies anymore.
I’ve spoken to several people who saw it and were deeply disappointed because it wasn’t the Christian movie they thought it would be. Joyful Noise is rated PG-13 and fully deserves it for a select handful of words that are a bit of a shock to the system considering the nature of the film. But properly put into perspective as a secular film, Joyful Noise is fairly tame.
From beginning to end, Joyful Noise is full of down home country wisdom that sounds absolutely natural coming out of Dolly Parton’s unnaturally preserved mouth. She and her folksy compatriots from Paccashaw, Georgia offer up such countrified pearls as “When foxes pack the jury box, the chicken is always guilty,” “I’d call you stubborn but it’d be an insult to mules,” “There’s always free cheese in the mousetrap but trust me, the mice there ain’t happy,” and “When you sing, the angels just about spit with envy.”
The film follows the members of a small town church choir competing in a national Gospel competition. Along the way the daughter of the choir director and the grandson of one of its prominent members begin a forbidden romance.
Alternately touching and funny, Joyful Noise accomplishes the goal of providing a platform for the musical talents of the stellar cast, which includes Parton, Queen Latifah, Keke Palmer, Jeremy Jordan, and – in a much too brief cameo performance – Kirk Franklin. It doesn’t cater to the most likely audience for a movie about a church choir and filled with Gospel music. Instead, it tries, and ultimately fails, to bridge the gap and be worldly enough for a general audience but “churchy” enough for fans of films like Courageous and Fireproof.
