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Health & Fitness

The Mark of Zorro: 'Joyful Noise' Gets a D

Never ever ever let your younger sister pick out a movie. Just warning you.

Will this be my first my first review on the Lorton Patch where I give a movie a less than an average grade? The answer to that question my fellow readers can be found in the contents of this page. 

So let me be honest and say that I was not looking forward to seeing this movie. Of course saying that doesn't really mean anything though because if this movie was actually good I would absolutely give this movie a positive rating. That being said I will be fair and say that this movie was..... not good. At least I'm being honest.

Now on with the review. There are many things that I did not like but the main thing that  I found unpleasant was that there was way to much stuff going. That is not always a bad thing in a movie though. When handled well it can turn out great like Inception but when it's not handled well it can turn out really bad like Valentine's Day. Which of those two movies would you guess that Joyful Noise is more like. Your guess is probably the same as mine.

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The fact that there is way to much stuff going on really makes it hard to summarize. I saw the trailer for this movie a while back and I thought the main plot was about two older women who don't like each other. In actuality though I'm not sure if there is a main plot. People could argue that the main plot is about one of many things. One could argue that this movie is mainly a love story about two young people but during the movie there are a few times in this movie where you don't see them together for long amounts of time to a point where you forget about them entirely.

Not only does this movie diverge from the love story plot but it diverges from all of the other plots as well. Like the fact that the main characters are part of a church choir and they have to compete against other church choirs to save their dying town. I honestly forgot about that plot completely and felt confused when they finally brought that plot back into the story. This same confusion happens with every plot in this movie! Many times during this movie I was so confused that I had no clue what was going on. This whole movie felt like a jumbled mess.

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Also many of these plots were just unnecessary. The plots that belong were the love story between the daughter of Queen Latifah and the grandson of Dolly Parton, the plot where Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton hate each other and the fact that they are part of a church choir. Plots that were unnecessary were the dad in the Army and the son of Queen Latifah that is mentally ill. If the movie was free of those plot then it would have been much less confusing.

To give you readers a good understanding of how some things are just way to unnecessary I will give you an example. Towards the beginning of the movie it is setting up the love between the young couple and after the first scene where they are alone together the movie starts to follow this women in the choir who then has sex with another member of the choir and he dies. Did that sound ridiculous to you or was it just me?

Another thing I found annoying were the songs in this movie. Its not that the songs were performed poorly or not fun. Actually the song at the end during the choir competition was awesome. However the other songs are just way to long. That's their only problem to. During the first forty minutes there were three songs.  Each song is about four minutes long and the entertainment factor wears thin really quick and caused me to become bored. The noise, meaning music, did not make me feel joyful.

Despite all my complaints though I can not totally hate this movie simply because it has a lot of heart. The love story part of this movie wasn't actually as bad as I thought it was going to be. I could have seen themselves as a couple and bought their romance. Also you can't say that you weren't happy when the sick son of Queen Latifah was playing the piano. If you weren't happy then I'm sorry to say that you don't have a soul and shouldn't have watched this movie.

In the end this movie had some heart and one good song but lacked two very important things. A script and good direction and usually when those two things are lacking then a really bad movie is made. That's right I'm looking at you Valentine's Day! Did I mention that I hate that movie? 

Joyful Noise reminded me so much of Valentine's Day and when a movie reminds me of another movie that I hate I have to give the movie a below average grade. So yes, this is my first movie review on the Lorton Patch with a below average rating and this movie definitely deserves a D.

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