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Well, so far, so good. And (whew!) bad news for viewers, but good news for me: With the arrival of the obviously mediocre Music Of The Heart, your humble auditor once again escapes that inevitable day of judgement.
While Meryl Streep is nothing less than splendid in this melodrama based on the true-life exploits of Roberta Guaspari, the humanitarian violin teacher who emerged from a failed marriage to buck the educational system in East Harlem, the genre-imitative effort is hardly the Stradivarius of storytelling. Take Blackboard Jungle, add some To Sir With Love and throw in a little of '67s Up The Down Staircase (if only to see Sandy Dennis give that bulgy-eyed, gulping stare of hers), and voila, daddy-o: You have all the recycled stereotypes and hackneyed plot mechanisms you'll need for your very own inner-city school drama.
Oddly enough, that's the route director Wes Craven (Nightmare On Elm Street), whose name rhymes with horror mayvin, chooses to take. And it's a curious choice indeed for the frightmeister's first segue from the slice-and-dice domain. In fact, the '50s soap opera style he employs is so blandly linear that one wonders if Mr. Craven is actually attempting a parody of made-for-TV movies. Yet of course he isn't, and it's a shame the talented filmmaker couldn't put his tale across with the sort of creative risk that might better symbolise his heroic protagonist.
But while the delivery system for this nonetheless inspirational tale leaves much to be desired, there's no discounting the often rewarding aura that is created. For instance, a large cast of always endearing moppets manages to be adorable without seeming too precocious. Pamela Gray's feel good script ennobles the spirit even if every other sentence seems like something out of Bartlett's most platitudinous quotations. Then Meryl Streep gives yet another one of her textbook acting lessons, in this case titled: "How to Save a Middling Movie in Spite of Itself, Without Making it Look Like You're Stealing the Show Because Actually You're Just That Good."
Doing her winning variation on the abandoned-like-an-old-dishrag wife that Jill Clayburgh etched so honestly in An Unmarried Woman, Miss Streep's Roberta learns that her thankless spouse has traded her in for a newer model. What to do? What to do? Especially when you have a nagging, ragging worry-wart mom like Assunta Guaspari (Cloris Leachman), certain that you and your two young boys will starve to death if you don't soon find a job -- "any job."
But we've an inkling that just any job simply won't do for Roberta. Happily, during a lacklustre stint at customer service, she reconnects with Aidan Quinn's Brian Sinclair, an old secret admirer from her high school days. A writer, the soon-to-be suitor knows of an experimental school where the gifted violin teacher may be able to peddle a portfolio understandably abridged by her Navy wife-and-mom background.
Maybe it's the prospect of teaching underprivileged Harlem school kids the ultra-challenging joys of the violin that does it. Magically, what heretofore was a cowering and downtrodden wretch is suddenly invigorated. Angela Bassett, wasted here as a hip but schoolboard-hampered principal, is soon won over by Roberta's end-justifies-the-means brand of inveiglement. Streep's musical maverick is hired as a sub. And adding to the saga's sociological shadings, she soon buys a dilapidated fixer-upper close to school and moves in with her boys.
The usual array of indigenously trite situations ensue. A promising little girl abruptly discontinues lessons when her abused mom must secretly be relocated by the authorities; one Hispanic boy is desperate to participate, but peer pressure reminds him it just isn't macho to play the violin; and one black young man's mother simply won't let him imbibe the "dead white man's music." Expectedly, Roberta makes quick social work of these objections.
Inevitable in a plot this severely conventional, one favoured child is killed in a drive-by shooting. But viewers should note that the ghetto-isation of this story, previously told in a prize-winning documentary, lands it far afield of its original source. Truth be told, few of the dastardly events depicted have any basis in fact. However, after the film flashes forward ten years, reality finally does catch up with Music Of The Heart. And it arrives in the form of that old bugaboo, money.
A villainously myopic school board, focused only on the financial bottom line, has the unmitigated chutzpah to cancel Roberta's program despite its obvious popularity and success. But don't quite give up the ship yet. Aided by the press and a retinue of dilettante types that include a neither here nor there Jane Leeves (the live-in housekeeper in Frasier) as Dorothea Van Hauften, they hatch plans for a benefit concert featuring the kids and some very big name sympathisers. Like a zombie who has been given his marching orders, the movie then unashamedly treads its predictable way to the Big Night finale.
Music Of The Heart strikes a chord that reminds me of a lecture given by Dr. Krankeit, the professor of film psychology at Ye Olde Film Criticism College. In his heavy Viennese accent, the psychiatrist declared: "Vile zee novice film creetik may delude himself vit fantasies of one day identifying zee next 'Citizen Kane,' in trude most movies just tell a very preedictable story. But, like zee tacit deal vee make when watching professional wrestling, it's OK if vee know dat zee fix is in, so long as goot weens out over evil and vee get a few trills along zee way."
By that definition, Music Of The Heart is strictly classical.
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