This movie was about a man named Darrin (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who returns to his hometown from New York City to read the will of his aunt who passed away. While he is there, he comes into contact with the other characters of the town (Montecarlo, GA) and he stumbles upon his old fling Lily (Beyoncé Knowles). Darrin's aunt leaves him in charge of leading the local church choir to a gospel championship. This was one of the greatest movies i've seen. I'm a huge fan of Beyoncé, so to see Beyoncé in this movie doing her thing is a dream for me. The movie has it's good and bad parts. The acting is great. The soundtrack is even greater. I think that this film would be more accepted by the African-American group. I myself am African-American and there are some parts in this movie where I think only African-Americans will get. It's an A+ Job. Cuba was hilarious in this movie. Not one of his best, but definitely great.

Excellent gospel music and some other musical gems highlight this otherwise poor excuse for a film. The music is as good as it gets. So good I just might buy my first gospel cd ever. But the goods stop there, with the possible exception of Beyonce who manages a decent acting performance to go with some superb vocals. Actually, the supporting cast is likable for the most part and do an okay job. However, Cuba Gooding Jr. was completely abysmal, almost as bad as the screenplay. The story itself is implausible, the jokes are stale and the dialogue is boring. Yet, the music was so much fun, I am glad that I saw it and would recommend it to others. Just fast forward through all parts where they are not singing. Believe me you won't miss anything worth seeing.

To my surprise, this was not a movie about the Temptations.

This is one of those cute "black" movies that makes white people wish they were black so they could have so much fun -- and I don't necessarily mean that in a cynical way. Others that come to mind are "The Preacher's Wife", "The Five Heartbeats"... I like movies like this, if only for relief from always seeing the same white actors on screen.

Of course, just like all Hollywood movies, it is total fantasy, and this one even more so seeing as it it was made by MTV (just check out the number of deleted music sequences on the DVD!).

And if you love gospel music (even some who don't),you will love this movie, despite the fact that it looks like the songs were written first and a script later to patch them all together, taking many shameless cues from "Sister Act" -- both One and Two.

The script is pretty lame in many parts -- mostly with Cuba Gooding's lines -- and the punch depends on the goings-on of mostly bit parts. LaTanya Richards as Paulina is extremely convincing as the self-righteous church treasurer, but there are no really strong protagonists (the only one around dies in the first fifteen minutes) so she pretty much controls the plot single- handedly.

The movie is all about cameos. Cameos, cameos cameos!! Even Shirley Caeser plays (who else?) herself ! ! They might as well have called Beyonce Beyonce and Cuba Cuba.

One other good thing I can say for the movie is the positive mixing of races it shows, among so many movies that tend to show mainly conflict among them. In my experience, the kind of mixing as shown in this movie is the real world, rather than the 99.9% black "Preacher's Wife", or for that matter 100% whiteness of so many movies. Sure, it may be fantasy (there is absolutely no racial tension present in this movie despite so much mingling),but I root for the positive image it projects.

If you are a cynic, this movie is not for you, but if you need some warm fuzzies, go for it!