MUSIC OF THE HEART ** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers (bill@filmfreakcentral.net)
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starring Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Aidan Quinn, Jane Leeves screenplay by Pamela Gray directed by Wes Craven
I must preface this review by admitting how much I despise the title Music of the Heart-NASA's Think Tank couldn't come up with something more generic. Wes Craven's new pic was more provocatively (and appropriately) called 50 Violins in development, and the switch only proves how far distributor Miramax has strayed from its edgy roots. Almost as infuriating is the positioning of an 'N Sync/Gloria Estafan duet as Music of the Heart's theme song-this unlistenable ballad opens and closes a film about music appreciation.
Faithfully based on the Oscar-nominated documentary Small Wonders, Music of the Heart stars Streep as Roberta Guaspari, a divorced mother of two sons who develops, at the urging of Brian, a man she met in high school (Quinn), a music program for Harlem gradeschoolers. The reception from staff, students, and parents of students is cool at first (racial issues, for the most part), but Roberta's dedication eventually wins over all three parties.
The story shares not only its basic outline with Mr. Holland's Opus but also an extremely frustrating "# Years Later" title card that weakly compacts Roberta's experiences as an educator. (Are both movies telling us that the life of a teacher is so repetitive that the intervening years between getting hired and retiring are a write-off?) I preferred what Craven had going in its first half: the moralizing was kept to a minimum, the narrative took unexpected turns (who could anticipate the outcome of Roberta's romance with Brian?), and Roberta's militaristic conduct in the classroom provided a refreshing take on the To Sir, With Love standard-no affable Mr. Holland is she.
Unintentional humour, soapboxing, and slack direction mar Music of the Heart's second half. When a few of Roberta's graduates return to strut their stuff for the new batch of students, they are conveniently the children we met earlier all grown up. When the horror of urban life in the nineties hits Roberta, the sequence plays like one from a moldy "ABC Afterschool Special". More gravely, this plot point and many others are not satisfactorily paid off. Take, for example, the story thread regarding Roberta's oldest son, Nick (played Michael Angarano at 7 and Charlie Hofheimer at 17), who is almost expelled for a spate of wild behaviour (emphasized in cheesy, choppy slow motion). One heart-to-heart with Roberta later and he's a cherubic goodie-goodie again. The primary grades are tough on a kid, especially in inner cities-how were his problems resolved outside the home? (Young Nick did, after all, almost murder another little boy.)
Craven's biggest blunder is to build audience anticipation for a rendez-vous between real-life master violinist Isaac Stern and the small wonders. Roberta's funding is cut, so she opts to organize (after she, Principal Williams (Bassett), a journalist (Leeves), and what seems like everybody else in town have sat around in Roberta's enormous living room the same way the Muppets do tossing out harebrained ideas) a benefit concert, the venue for which hinges on Stern's input. His name is also mentioned in virtually every scene leading up to the climax, yet his cameo amounts to one shot. Blink and you'll miss him. I wanted a moment in which the physically disabled Isaac introduces himself to the girl who also can't stand up when she plays her instrument, even if it didn't actually happen-Gray's screenplay is, oddly, not formulaic enough.
You'll notice that up to this point I have neglected to discuss Wes "A Nightmare on Elm Street" Craven's filmmaking background. I didn't feel it necessary until moments ago I had an epiphany: timing is everything in horror movies and comedies-there's little in Music of the Heart, a light drama, that exercises Craven's well-honed editing skills, save for a few genuinely amusing takes from Josh Pais as Roberta's teaching rival, Dennis. That said, Craven just turned sixty, and I fully sympathize with his desire to leave fright flicks. After two excellent Scream pictures and a handful of other creepy classics, he's eligible for retirement from the genre, but he does seem a little lost without a reason to scare us.
-October, 1999
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