The Fighting Temptations
``The Fighting Temptations'' is junk, but like ``Bringing Down the House'' or ``Sweet Home Alabama,'' it's the sort of junk that may turn out to be a hit. The film traffics in feel-good cliches of community and belonging; there are enough supporting players who know how to deliver the goods; and director Jonathan Lynn is smart enough to interrupt what he's doing every so often to let the cast belt out some seriously transporting gospel and R&B numbers.
Against that you have an overstuffed story line, sloppy filmmaking, a general thinness of conception (if you've seen ``Sister Act,'' you've pretty much seen ``The Fighting Temptations''), and a lead performance that starts out obnoxious and becomes actively grating.
Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as Darrin Hill, a Manhattan ad exec whose buppie resume is a fraud from top to bottom - an interesting idea for a topical drama, but fairly offensive in a formulaic comedy. Darrin is called back home to tiny Monte Carlo, Ga., for the reading of his Aunt Sally's will; to her only surviving heir she has left a small fortune in stock, on the condition that he take over the town's bedraggled church choir and lead it to the annual Gospel Explosion competition.
There's also prize money involved, and creditors are at Darrin's door, so he passes himself off as a record producer and sets about bringing the choir into the 21st century. His nemesis is Paulina (LaTanya Richardson), the control-freak church lady who ran his mama (singer Faith Evans) out of town decades before. His ace in the hole is Lilly (Beyonce Knowles), the local fallen woman and an R&B singer in a juke joint that appears to have been airlifted in - musicians, backup singers, and all - from the South Side of Chicago.
There is not one scintilla of suspense about where ``Temptations'' is headed (another reason it may be a hit), so you grab your pleasures where you can. Thankfully, the cast is neatly divided between reliable comedians and monumental singers. Of the former, Mike Epps of the ``Friday'' films scores as a local ``bootyologist,'' while Steve Harvey is sublimely dry as the town's disheveled disc jockey. Other ostensibly funny choir members register less strongly, in part because we have no idea who they are; the film never bothers to introduce them.
The musical talent doesn't need introduction, though the film was half over before I realized that the little old lady in the first pew was Broadway and R&B legend Melba Moore. The Rev. Shirley Caesar and Ann Nesby kick off the film with a prodigious rendition of ``My Stone,'' the Five Blind Boys of Alabama figure in the final competition, and when Darrin wanders into a barber shop, why, there are the O'Jays singing ``Love Me Like a Rock.'' ``Temptations'' is overlong at 123 minutes, but since the padding comes in the form of extended musical numbers, it's hard to kick.
Beyonce? The Destiny's Child singer has yet to prove she's an actress of any specific gifts, but she's a likable enough presence, and her voice contains multitudes of notes, intonations, timbres - it's an unshowy marvel that's able to take a bad idea like an R&B update of ``Fever'' and spin it into sonic gold.
As soon as she stops singing, though, you lose sight of her behind Gooding's manic, miscast lead performance. With each new career choice, the 1996 Oscar winner and star of ``Snow Dogs'' and ``Boat Trip'' seems ever more desperate to please. In ``Temptations,'' Gooding's too nice to be the deceptive rat of the early scenes, and he's just about unwatchable after he has his mid-movie change of heart: bugging his eyes, boogying down, doing ``Jerry Maguire'' back flips under the end credits. There's nothing here to match the horror that is the trailer for the upcoming ``Radio,'' in which Gooding plays a mentally challenged mascot for a white football team, but the shamelessness of the performance can still make you flinch. I'm not sure what the actor has in mind, but he's on track to become the Buckwheat of his generation.
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