Metacritic reviews

Joyful Noise is a good movie when it lifts up its heart and lets people sing.

The movie's musical numbers are catchy and rollicking and, in their bright sunshiny way, rather soulful.

Grousing aside, this is a disarmingly sweet movie, enjoyable to the hilt, with music that really stomps.

More stupid movies should leave you with such a blissfully stupid smile.

Staggeringly cornball and squeaky-clean even when flirting with such issues as interracial sexual rivalries.

A routinely plotted competition drama in which Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton (playing her first bigscreen lead in 20 years) vie for control of a small-town Georgia church chorus.

A cheerful, not-quite-off-color crowd-pleaser that rarely breaks formula, it's the big screen equivalent of a sloppy smooch from your over-affectionate aunt over the holidays.

Speaking of camp, the diva battle teased in the trailer for Joyful Noise between its two stars, Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton, flatlines, as do most of the movie's jokes.

Joyful Noise is an ungainly assembly of parts that don't fit, and the strange thing is that it makes no particular effort to please its target audience, which would seem to be lovers of gospel choirs.

The film feels about as genuine and spontaneous as its evident lip-synching.