Sister Act meets Burlesque in the American south. As loglines go, Joyful Noise has a doozy.

Full Review | May 25, 2021

Parton also is quite game to poke fun of her long-standing history of plastic surgery.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 13, 2020

An insane piece of modern cinema that makes me wish I did drugs. Lots of drugs. Hard drugs.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 11, 2020

"Joyful Noise" brings plenty of noise, but very little joy.

Full Review | May 7, 2019

Joyful Noise comes alive in the performance scenes but the dramatic dialogue is so insipid that even good actors sound as though they're reading from a generic cut-and-paste script.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2018

It feels insulting to the type of characters it's portraying.

Full Review | Jun 25, 2018

When it comes down to it, you'd probably be wiser to stick with Glee. You get roughly the same amount of musical numbers, equally melodramatic storylines and hammy acting in less than half the time.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Sep 28, 2017

Joyful Noise is trite, predictable, unrealistic and leaden.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2017

I did, however, enjoy when Kris Kristofferson comes back from the dead to sing a duet with Dolly.

Full Review | May 3, 2015

Noise it is, joyful it is not.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 9, 2013

In what ends up as a nightmarish fusion of Glee and Sister Act 2, a mixed-race church choir makes a bid for glory by painfully "Christianising" scraps of once perfectly acceptable pop songs.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 14, 2013

If you've the slightest aversion to camp, you should obviously steer clear. But then this film was never for you. It's for the spiritual year-round inhabitants of Dollywood.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2013

If you've the slightest aversion to camp, you should obviously steer a million miles clear. But then this film was never for you.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 4, 2012

Disarmingly heart-warming in its musical prowess and lazy in its storytelling development, hoping that the former - plus the big names - will attract a large enough crowd to keep it buoyant at the box office.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 29, 2012

Even numbers by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson take on a religious note. Not much of a God-given screenplay, however.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 29, 2012

Corny and contrived, this provides both leading ladies with sweet ballads and tart one-liners and at least they resisted the temptation to set it all at Christmas.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 29, 2012

Larger than life and twice as loud, Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton trade snappy one-liners and spirited musical numbers in Joyful Noise, an enjoyably corny musical comedy about a gospel choir seeking to uplift a depressed Southern town.

Full Review | Jun 29, 2012

In the end, it's impossible to resist the film's exuberant high spirits.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 28, 2012

Todd Graff's film sags badly in the middle and is clunky with social context (recession, Asperger's), but there's enough good heart to see you through.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 28, 2012

Actor-turned-director Todd Graff actually knows what he's doing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 28, 2012