Its a Bank Holiday weekend, which means a lazy one, doing a few light chores, eating junk food and working through the ‘To Watch’ pile, and a series my Partners been dying to get me to watch now for months, if not Years, the ‘Sister Act’ films. She grew up with them and has a very strong affinity towards them, I’d never seen them, was vaguely aware of the premise, but was promised a riproaring time. So we went for it today.
The plot follows Deloris (Goldberg), a lounge singer in a two-bit club on the Reno strip, who’s in the midst of an affair with mob boss Vince LaRocca but is planning on cutting all ties due to Vince’s lack of commitment and fleeing Reno to start a new life in New York or California.
However; on going to break the news of her departure, she accidentally catches Vince and his gang in the middle of a cold blooded murder, fleeing from the scene while being trailed by Vinces goons, she winds up at the local police department, who offer to put her in witness protection as long as she’ll give testimony to Vince’s crimes. She’s incredibly reluctant…And about to get even MORE dismissive of the idea, when she finds out her ‘Witness Protection’ location for the next month or two is to be a Convent in Chicago, where she’s told she has to pretend to be a Nun for the duration of her stay in order to not blow her cover.
Deloris REALLY struggles to fit in with the convent lifestyle and butts heads with the ‘stuck in her ways’ mother superior (Played by Maggie Smith) things get close to the whole thing being called off, until the Mother Superior decides to take Deloris off of all duties apart from Choir practice. At which point her fortunes turn around, when Deloris begins to realise the Nuns are capable of great vocal feats. But need shaping and moulding to fit the more motown and soul sound of the 50s and 60s. Butting heads with the Mother Superior all the way over trying to drag the church into the 1960s. rather than leaving it languishing in the 1860s. All the while, Vince and his gangs have a nation wide manhunt on for Deloris, leading to a deadly finale!
And, I thought this was a fun little movie, Its not exactly the most challenging watch to sit through, but its bright, quite high energy and had enough fun moments to keep me engaged more or less throughout.
The scripts pretty decently paced, has a rock solid opening act that really helps bed in the scenario and concept, the humours a tad ‘lowest common denominator’ stupid at times, but there is some genuinely well written funny character pieces here, the tone plays for bright and vibrant for the most part, but uses the mob subplot to help add a bit of dark contrast to the humour.
I suppose the two biggest issues I have with the script are pretty simple ones. The first being that I think the second act gets a bit lost in trying to build up Deloris’s journey to the final act. they dont really utilise the cops/mob/deloris lying low element of the script all that much, and it feels a bit like in the middle of the film it flaps about a bit trying to find its thread to help guide it into the third act. I feel like either it should have been 10 minutes shorter with emphasis on trimming down the 2nd act, or they should have involved the mob and the manhunt elements more into the 2nd act to help add to the variety.
And the other issue? is that I dont really feel like the characters beyond Deloris, Mary Patrick and Mary Robert are all that well developed. we dont get a whole lot of backstory for these characters beyond the core three and maybe the mother superior, we dont get a lot of character development beyond the core three either. This is also one of those kinds of films that abruptly stops at the end, and (mild spoilers) the mob plot doesnt really get fully resolved, which I was a bit dissapointed in, as i’d have liked to have seen, even a brief scene of Vince and co getting the book thrown at them. It feels very much like a film flying by the seat of its pants for the most part. And, while thats all well and good if your caught up in the moment and just going with the vibes. The second you start questioning the small details, it all quickly starts making almost no sense. Which did lose me a bit.
Mercifully though, from that point onwards, we’re clover. Direction is solid, creative and technically well handled (its a studio pic, I didnt really have any doubts it wasnt going to be a polished end product)
The cine too is well shot, decently composed, colour usage is subdued, with a nice contrast of sharper colours to show the difference between the royal reds and creams of the church, and the neon soaked sin pit of Reno. the sets are fabulous, the location work is fabulous and the edit is nice and tight.
Theres not a bad performance in the bunch here, Whoopie Goldberg is wonderful as Deloris, and while its maybe not my favourite film she’s starred in (Ghost, if you must know) she still absolutely aces the assignment and is frankly delightful. As are the core players of Keitel, Najimy, Smith and Makkena. they’re pretty much perfect castings. they bring a solid energy and confident, natural performance to this that I really quite loved.
But easily, the best thing about this film is its scoring, which is part jukebox film, part choral delight. No notes, the moments the Nuns are singing are expertly handled and look and sound great. its a solid score with some real soul hits on there that I loved.
All in all, ‘Sister Act’ is a pretty good time. while I had some issues with it here and there, its definitely one I could recommend for a family film night, and I was pleasently surprised it was as enjoyable as it was. Its imperfect, but it does what it does very well!
TYTD Reviews 