"A
Joyful Noise" is better than you will expect it to be but not quite as
good as it can be. There are 1-2 plots too many and certainly one song
too much but Dolly and Queen deliver, though both are not as sassy as
can be.

The picture 'introduces' Jeremy Jordan who has already gotten rave reviews for two theatre performances, the first being "Newsies"
which is coming to Broadway and "Bonnie and Clyde", which has come and
gone from Broadway, with Jeremy getting star making notices. His has a
good voice, holds his own as an actor and will become a heart throb. His
love interest, Keke Palmer, matches him note for note and, in some cases, goes higher.

A standout in the movie is Dexter Darden, playing Latifah's son, who has Asperger's syndrome and a dynamite smile. Jesse L. Martin, in a subplot, is effective as his and Palmer's father.  Kris Kristofferson has what amounts to a cameo as Dolly's husband and even gets to sing, well croak out, a couple of song lines with her.

All right, let's get to why you would probaby go to the movie and that are the two stars,Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton.

They
both get to act sassy and their 'cat fight' isn't funny enough to have
laughs or bad enough to be camp.  When given the right lines, by screen
writer Todd Graff, who also directed, both can deliver when the insults fly at each other but there aren't enough of them. Latifah has a couple of emotional scenes that she puts over with aplomb. (Full disclosure: I fell in love with Queen Latifah in the 1990s when I waited on her and her family at the Crabhouse Restaurant in Plantation, Florida, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. She was a delight to wait on and who ever did the tipping did okay! LOL)

Like many I find Dolly Parton a  talented song writer and singer along with being funny and who she
is but, at 66, Dolly has had one surgical procedure too much! She is
looking like Joan River's twin and her face is so stiff her script
lines, even about the 'improvements', aren't funny whether coming from
her or Latifah. Dolly, if you can, go back to looking like yourself!

The
remarks I heard most often when leaving the movie were, "That was a lot
better than I expected." It was mainly a senior citizen audience but,
with word of mouth, should do more business with the younger crowd.

There is a lot of music which, if done in a theatre, would have had the aduience clapping along as most is gospel, even with "The Man In The Mirror" given the church choir treatment.

"A Joyful Noise" is just that, an entertaining film that won't win any awards but will be 'a lot better than expected.'