Sunday School Musical

Faith Films, the company that put this out, is known for two things. The first is making crappy faith based movies. The second is they're owned by The Asylum. You know The Asylum. They're that company that makes crappy rip-off movies. While occasionally they come out with some "so bad they're good" movies like "Sharknado", most of the time they just make crap. The difference is Faith Films has never made a good movie.

Basically this is like High School Musical but with worse songs, worse acting and the most obvious AVR ever. I'm not kidding. Every single scene is crammed with terrible AVR. Maybe they couldn't afford a boom mike of something but it's not just that. The sound mixing is terrible. You don't even get any kind of background noise. If the characters aren't talking, then there's no sound.

Basic story is a student by the name of Zach is part of the choir that are going on to some big contest to win $10K. But he gets transferred to another school, joins their choir and has them join the contest as well. Shenanigans ensue as his old choir mates see this as a betrayal and Zach feels torn between his old friends and new friends.

Honestly there's no reason to see this. I'm not a fan of any of the High School Musical movies but I'd gladly watch one of those instead of this. At least the acting, singing and dancing is better in those.

The Asylum have definitely done much worse than Sunday School Musical, that's saying little though because Sunday School Musical didn't work for this viewer. There are some redeeming value, Chris Chatman was likable as Zachary and had a great voice, the ending song was at least catchy and the best lyrics in the movie were in this song and the dance in the boy's bathroom is the most creative Sunday School Musical gets. The photography and camera work are pretty awful to say the least(like bad horror movie standard), to the extent you question whether there was a photographer at all. And it disallowed me to remotely enjoy the rest of the production values, which weren't that special actually to begin with. The songs are unmemorable with generic melodies and tired lyric writing, and the mostly tuneless singing and choreography that shows next to no passion don't help. The writing has cheesiness all over it, the spirituality and faith angles were good ideas but explored with the utmost banality. That the story is predictable is somewhat predictable, that it has no energy, real fun or passion isn't. The characters infuriate in how they behave and how they act towards one another, shallow is the best way to describe them, while apart from Chatman the acting is very poor, Candice Lakota has a decent voice but is a vapid actress. Overall, not terrible but at best lacklustre. 3/10 Bethany Cox

The B-movie studio The Asylum has put out some of the most cheap, tacky, and just plain bad B movies in the past several years. I have learned to avoid their movies, unless they come on TV for free and I have nothing else to do. (And even in those circumstances I don't like their movies very much.) I'm not sure then why I decided to give "Sunday School Musical" a whirl, though maybe it was because it was made though their Faith Films division, and I was curious to see how they would make a squeaky clean religious movie.

Well, I watched it. I was expecting the worst, though I have to admit that it wasn't as bad as I expected. Like all Asylum movies, the movie looks pretty cheap in most aspects, though the photography and lighting is surprisingly professional. The songs are instantly forgettable after they finish, though they are somewhat pleasant to hear while they are being belted out. The cast is filled with amateur actors, though they act in a low key manner that makes their performances relatively painless to witness.

The script is both pretty predictable and seemingly has some linking scenes missing, though the writing thankfully does not hit viewers over the head with religion, instead focusing mostly on good values that you can approve of whatever your faith may be. The script is also somewhat slow in unfolding the story (and is executed in a somewhat "soft" manner that may have you wishing that there was a bit more bite), but has a few positive attributes, like portraying interracial relationships as no big deal.

In the end, while "Sunday School Musical" is far from a great movie, viewers regardless of their faith will probably find it somewhat better than they were expecting. Though I think the people who would really appreciate it would be, of course, people who are pretty religious.

The Asylum is a company known for making shoddy knockoff products or rather mockbusters. I'm not quite sure what the difference between those two things is. This is an obvious ripoff of "High School Musical" which a lot of people hated to begin with. HSM at least has the distinction of being the first in the series and having (somewhat of) a budget. You could easily see the budget was so low they couldn't even have extras in most scenes. HSM was way better with that! This was a bad religious movie before most bad religious movies like "Left Behind", "God's Not Dead" and "Saving Christmas".

I guess bad religious movies have always been around. I'm actually glad this wasn't a mockbuster of something supernatural or else we'd see horrible special effects. This movie is extremely boring with bad acting. There's one scene where the kid just gets mad on a rooftop with leads to no dancing or anything. Why is the main character so mad about moving when he can easily travel back to his old place all the time? Watch "Bridge To Terabithia", once again, for a good religious movie. *1/2

The DVD cover said High School Musical inspired, blatantly so. I accept that HSM can be inspiration, for me anyhow.

The price was relatively low. Play the DVD, I found there to be highs and lows. Low budget films can be okay, but one often has to be able to shrug off flaws in order to experience them as okay. So, most big budget stuff has flaws, too, and these also need to be within limits that the individual can tolerate.

This is a musical and the soundtrack construction is where I most notice signs of lack of expertise. When the songs come along the record volume often seems to have been turned up. With my volume control set at a bit lower volume than usual then I can tolerate things.

The next flaw is the credibility of the storyline, this is nowhere near the only story that has difficulties with that so one does gradually pick up expertise in being able to get by. One has a limited choice if one hopes for a credible plot? The nice aspect of that, for me, is that it helps HSM to feel more believable. They really do after watching this.

So, a low cost DVD inspired in part by HSM and with care I can tolerate the main flaws.

Except that this is a Sunday school story. The plot centres around church activities. As an émigré from the churches I find this to be the difficult part. The best songs are very churchy. These days, for me that does get in the way.

*

Move away from religion, I found it way too easy to need to consider standard stories as text for a secular religion. There were maybe even beliefs in the sixties that centred on that. Paradox. I found that got in the way, how I approached things, but it also seemed like an essential idea.

Around 2009, when two missionaries from Utah called at my house I mentioned that I no longer looked to religion, but that I did consider the Salt Lake City manufactured HSM to be Utah religious texts that I could accept. I got the impression that the missionaries considered me to be misunderstanding secular religion.

Sunday School Musical (2008) does help me with this. It is clearly religious stuff and considers what used to be understood as basic religious topics. These also relate to the day to day world.

Watch HSM soon after and I can now accept them just as rather neat stories. I do not need them to be anything but sugar. The sugar of the frocks, the sugar of the best of Sharpay, whatever. HSM is inspirational if one can accept them as sugar? I should have told the missionaries that Utah professionals have made some very respectable sugar?