Music of the Heart
This one was another flick I was mildly interested in, but the Mrs. really wanted to see. We shelled out for a matinee, and settled in for a movie with one of the least sympathetic protagonists since Your Friends and Lovers.
Glenn Close plays a woman who takes up teaching violin to inner city kids after her husband dumps her. After struggling to get the program started, she has the rug pulled out from under her years later, prompting concerts to raise funding for the program. There are minor subplots, but don't blink or you'll miss them.
Okay. Take Stand and Deliver and make it about violins instead of math. Now take out Edward James Olmos' character and replace him with the psycho bitch from Fatal Attraction (shouldn't be too hard... Close looks the same). Forget all the other names you heard mentioned in the previews; their on-screen times are roughly what you see in the ads. Close is in every scene, and she's a screeching witch in all but two. No wonder I never wanted to play the violin...
I wasn't really a fan of this one, but if you just look at it as a melodramatic documentary on how the Harlem violin project got started, you can almost get beyond the lack of character depth. Check this out in second-run theatres.
Back to the reviews main page