Cinema
Sister Act 2 ('PG', Selected cinemas)
Of dog-collars and wimples
Mark Steyn
Abusy week for Beethoven, both the distinguished composer (1770-1827) and his canine namesake (b. 1992). Beethoven the dog takes the leading role — or, at any rate, the role in lead — in Beethoven's Sec- ond. When the first movie was released a couple of years back, I couldn't figure out who'd call a pooch Beethoven. No wonder I'm not a studio exec.: if there were an Oscar for Best Sequel Title, the guy who dreamt this one up would be a shoo-in. It's the best since Die Hard was followed by Die Harder. And, even then, you knew they'd have problems after Die Hardest. But Beethoven's Second: That's a sequel title that is devastating in its implications. Another seven films to go, plus a musical Fidolio.
It's all downhill after the credits, and you can't work out why a classy comic actor like Charles Grodin wants to play a second second-fiddle to a St Bernard. But at least there is the title. Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit doesn't even make it that far. It's fun the first time: you see a good-looking novi- tiate and snigger to your pals, 'Hey, that's a habit I'd like to get into'. But that's the point: you don't need a professional to make 'back in the habit' cracks; anyone can do it. If you're going to pay money for jokes, on the whole you'd rather it was for jokes you hadn't already thought of your- self.
But, as the title goes, so goes the movie. It opens with Whoopi Goldberg, Holly- wood's frog-princess, doing a Motown medley at a Vegas lounge — dully shot and casually lip-synched. Mostly, Hollywood makes bad films which look, sound and feel good: in Beethoven's Second, there's always the dog tricks; in Bruce Willis's films, there's always, er, a crane shot of Bruce scrambling up a building. But Sister Act 2 is a bad film made badly, a first draft on a limited budget.
The plot is the one about the nuns' decaying inner-city school being saved from closure and its rap-happy inmates being redeemed by the care of a feisty teacher who tells it like it is. Even by the standards of most video-aimed comedy sequels, Sister Act 2 seems under-powered. Never mind how you solve a problem like Maria, how do you solve a problem like Whoopi? A deeply shallow performer who saves her passion for reading autocued one-liners at the Oscars, she comes over like she's mere- ly passing through the movie en route to her own sitcom. Except that you'd be hard pressed to find an American sitcom as poorly characterised as this. Whoopi plays a lounge singer pretending to be a nun, but, as both incarnations are dismally drawn, it could just as easily be the other way around. The gags are the usual con- vent classics, 'Teach them to play soccer'. 'We don't have the balls for that.' Bill Duke, directing, seems to think Whoopi in a wimple is, in and of itself, enough; Beethoven does more with his dog collar.
The other nuns, meanwhile, sing 'My Guy' and 'Ball of Confusion'. Occasionally, in the school's corridors, you glimpse Mag- gie Smith as the Mother Superior, tiptoeing furtively around the edges of the movie as she's terrified she might run into the ghost of Miss Brodie. We've come a long way since Bing Crosby in Going My Way, and we've gone Whoopi's way rather than Bing's. 'Opera, rock'n'roll, rap — I like it all,' she tells the kids in the music class. But we don't get to hear much opera. Instead, for the state singing competition, the class learns Beethoven and Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' in a super-funky arrangement. Beethoven would be turning in his grave, if he weren't deaf. Beethoven the dog would head for the nearest lamp-post. Our schools and our movies spiral downwards in ever more futile compromises: rap is fun, Beethoven is educative, but rapped-up Beethoven is neither. I saw this film at a New York fleapit with a couple of hookers sheltering from the rain and some two-bit punk in combat gear. Rightly recognising this scene as a con, he attempted to mug me instead. As I fought him off, one of the girls remarked approvingly, 'This is funnier than the movie'.
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