Sunday School Musical

Before I set out to watch this movie, I checked out the reviews here and a few users believed this movie was worth every cent they forked out for it. I, on the other hand, after watching the movie, strongly believe otherwise. For most parts, the movie dabbled in some teen angst like moving away from your friends and participating in competitions and so on and so forth. And that was pretty much it. Not to mention the songs sounded particularly like a Boyz II Men karaoke compilation throughout. Their acting was nothing shy of mediocre and I was cringing for most times whenever they aren't breaking out into some dance or song. To be precise, their acting was very forced and amateur-ish. It wasn't very entertaining in other words and if you are already a HSM fan, please do not proceed to ruin your movie experience by watching this.

Move over, Buttercream Gang. You've been dethroned as the lamest movie ever made. This is so bad, you guys. This is not only LAAAAAAME, but one of the most incompetantly made films I've ever seen. Acting that ranges from flat to okay, half-hearted songs, awkward editing and ATROCIOUS sound. A good chunk of the sound sounds like it was dubbed. The volume fluctuates constantly. One moment I can barely hear them talk, and the next it's BLASTING the main character's sad song that I don't care about.

Highly recommend, especially if you saw it the same day as Threads. I laughed my ass off the entire time.

The entire movie is so good! From the terrible songs to the choppy editing, you won't be able to tear your eyes away from a single scene in this movie (in a car crash on the side of the road kinda way)! All of the choirs sound bad, even the lead one I'm supposed to think is good (NOTE FOR THE CHOREOGRAPHERS: I know they all probably came in not knowing how to dance, but did you even try to teach them? or did the director just give them half-thought mannerisms from behind the camera?). One thing that would've been nice is if the shots of the kids singing lined up with their mouths moving, or sounded like the same person singing throughout the movie. I'm sure they're children and thus not all professional singers, but they couldn't find at least one decent sounding person per character to at least do the dubs for their songs? This movie asks me to suspend my belief for too long- 1 hour, 33 minutes, 19 seconds too long. I can't say I was a devout Christian going into this movie, but I definitely am not now.

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 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.