Review of Sunday School Musical (2008) by Josh G — 11 Apr 2009

I watch a lot of bad Christian movies. When you go into them, you have to expect certain things: bad acting, bad writing, bad lighting, bad sound, clunky/preachy messages about Jesus, and usually somebody being turned into a better Christian through the magic powers of poor arguments OR unbelievable miracles. That said, Sunday School Musical still managed to be disappointing.

It's called Sunday School Musical, but I can only remember one time when God/Jesus was mentioned, aside from in the songs - which included the very inspirational "This Little Light of Mine". The one time when God/Jesus was mentioned was when a girl asked her father why her mother had to die as a result of a terrible cancer. Her father, overwhelmed with having to explain the progression of his wife's disease to his young daughter, turned to that old 'mysterious ways' chestnut to get him through the explanation. There is no other mention of God in the movie, if I remember correctly.

So what most of the film consists of is Zachary's plight. Zachary is part of the bestest Christian high school choir in the area, and they are planning on taking their act to state in order to win the grand prize of $10,000. I'm sure that they'll donate that money to their favorite charity, since there's all that stuff about rich men going through the eye of a needle in the Bible. But actually, more than likely they'll just buy iPods. So they can listen to the Sunday School Musical soundtrack! Zachary's mother loses her job as a nurse at the local hospital because of this damn economy, though, and he has to move a whole 30 miles away! He'll never see his friends now! But what's worse, he won't be singing with his current choir anymore. Instead, he'll have to join up with his new school's choir, and this school used to be his mortal enemy. This school's choir sucks.

Zachary stands in for Jesus here. He alone is the magic that makes his new school's choir into the best... although their choir rehearsal mainly consists of him singing while everybody else kind of provides a quiet back-up and maybe some harmonica. Not that this is any different from his previous school. When they sang "This Little Light of Mine" in the opening scene, he went into some soulful wailing while everybody else just kind of hummed. And then there's some crazy choreography going down, which shouldn't affect the results of a choir competition (nobody else break-dances), but it apparently does. Zachary's old classmates feel betrayed by him. It's going to take some serious singing to get them to understand that we can all work together and win that $10,000. Yeah!

The actors are bad, of course. They are most likely actual high school students with no acting experience at all. There are a couple of times when you can't hear the characters speak because the boom mike is not close enough to them. The lip-synching to the songs is alright, and the songs are pretty okay if forgettable. They all seem to end abruptly, which I found disconcerting. I don't know why, but director Rachel Goldenberg sometimes decided to have shots that showed the characters' entire bodies, which allowed the viewer to see the bulky microphone strapped to their back underneath their shirts. And so on. The dialogue between the characters is weak. The plot is just dumb - there is a quick problem that needs overcome near the end, but the reason that the problem popped up in the first place is never explained and is in fact questioned by one of the characters.

But don't get the impression that all of this makes Sunday School Musical a laff riot. It is not. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that my friend and I were trying to riff it Mystery Science Theater-style throughout its runtime, the movie would have been pretty unbearably lackluster. There's not even some crazy religious beliefs espoused within the movie that you can laugh at. It's got to be the most secular Christian movie I've ever seen. Two of the characters even share a kiss! Unmarried teenagers share a kiss on-screen! It's borderline blasphemous... right? I can never remember the rules of this religion, as they seem to change from one story to the next. But I'm getting off-topic here.

What I'm really trying to say is that Sunday School Musical is boring and dumb and nothing else. It's not funny. It's not inspiring. It's not anything but boring and dumb. That's all there is to say.

P.S. In the blooper reel, which is torturous in how NOT funny it is, one of the actors messes up her line and in frustration utters a horrible curse word. What she says is - cover your ears children - what she says is, "Oh my god." Luckily, Goldenberg saved us from the horrors hearing that by bleeping out the final word. Whew! What Goldenberg should have done, though, is fire that girl right there on the spot for not being a True brand Christian. But whatever. Some people do it differently. I understand. Some people are okay with going to Hell. You know, that's fine. That's why God gave us free will. So you can choose to go to Hell, Rachel Goldenberg. You've made that choice. That's your choice.