Review

by Natacha V

not great but well-meaning

Another film to mark the strange career of Cuba Gooding Jr., an actor who seems to want to make people want to forget his talent even more regularly than Nicolas Cage. Here he plays an arrogant young advertiser who comes back to the rural American town he left when he was a child to attend his aunt's funeral. Sooner than you can say 'Brewster's Billions' he's been left a large inheritance in the will which he can only get if he manages to fulfill certain obligations - in this case leading the local church choir to the finals of Gospel Explosion (a singing competition that sounds more like an unfortunate accident at the Motown factory). He also meets up with childhood sweetheart Beyonce Knowles who inevitably teaches him some life lessons along the way. It's all fairly by the book and you know how it's going to end but at least the musical sequences are all pretty good.