[Archive]: Sunday School Musical (2008)

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Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg

Screenplay: Rachel Lee Goldenberg and Ashley Holloway

Cast: Chris Chatman as Zachary; Candise Lakota as Savannah; Krystle Connor as Aundrea; Robert Acinapura as Miles; Amy Ganser as Margaret; Millena Gay as Anita; Dustin Fitzsimons as Charlie; Cliff Tan as Trevor; Mark Hengst as Pastor Joe

First written on 10th July 2013

Continuing with my Archive reviews, here is piece of an entire month of "Bad" cinema from my older blog, which is still in existence but with mind of keeping all my materials together, I've transitioned to here. This was film #12 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema, back when I was mad enough to coordinate an entire month where each day had a review; eventually, to pull back the curtain like the Wizard in Oz, I cheated by composing the reviews the month before, as with my October horror festivals, but the challenge was felt and I am still proud of these mad little challenges even if they caused more stress than the plan was intended to.

As always, none of the material no matter how embarrassing it is will be altered, just with the grammar and paragraphing changed when required to make it easier to read.

In terms of the review, I was mean to The Asylum, but I will defend the attitude of my older self that by the 2000s this straight-to-video market got exceptionally lazy, even if my rose tinted glasses about Roger Corman have disappeared, and in mind to how I have become found of the low budget curiosities that have made up this era. The line later on that Christians should make their own films has becomes ironically precedent for myself hasn't it though? I confess I haven't dealt into the wave of Christian cinema from the United States that was being made from this era onwards, but by all accounts, the modern strain has none of the nuisance of say, Robert Bresson, instead falling into the kind of very simplified viewpoints that are problematic. We should point these issues out as much in liberal American cinema, but there's as much to clearly find in this wave of Christian cinema of a conservative bent which isn't helping the cause either, not just Kirk Cameron taking a nose dive on metaphorical concrete when he made a very embarrassing defend about Christmas that appeared in some cinemas. There's a lot I'd want to watch and even cover though, not just morbidly as by accounts Indivisible (2018), a war film based on a real life war chaplain, is a fascinating and appropriately complex film I'm now reminded to investigate, so I wouldn't just dismiss this entire cultural movement offhand without an eyewitness account.

As for Sunday School Musical itself? I'd gladly investigate the film again even though I was put off by The Asylum back then because they never lived up by the standard of at least being memorable. Sadly Chris Chatman, the lead who I compliment, never made enough film baring one in post-production called Welcome Matt. The director Rachel Lee Goldenberg, to my surprise, is behind the curious Lifetime film A Deadly Adoption (2015), played entirely straight by all accounts as their usual type of film but starring Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig outside their usual ballpark, marking it a potential curiosity if I can ever track it down. Goldenberg is also unfortunately the directoress of the musical remake of the 1983 film Valley Girl, which has been in limbo due to its casting of YouTuber Logan Paul, a figure whose controversial decision to upload footage of a suicide victim on his YouTube page contributed to the film, which was complete, never getting released.

To soften the tone of that later, incredible dark piece of knowledge I learnt of just putting together this Archive review, I'm also throwing in a bonus mini-one about the live action Fist of the North Star adaptation. Not really reviews, more of a stub, but sod it, since I horde this content on my computer hard drive, why not release it again anyway? Plus it's a reminder that, whilst a 1000 Anime review in truth, if I could ever re-see the 1995 film, based on the Japanese manga/anime franchise, I'd more than happy revisit the film for all the curious tit-bits I mention. I didn't even write, to my surprise, that Malcolm McDowell is also in it of many details long forgotten...

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Original Review

I worried, looking out of curiosity for reviews of this film online before planning one of my own, that by covering it I fall in danger of taking on the same cheap targets that I questioned professional critics of doing with the Jack and Jill (2011) review. Is anyone who reviews a film like this, including myself, really going to write anything thoughtful, even actually funny, or will this be like a bad video review where you see the whole film dispersed with obvious and bad jokes? Am I just being a hypocrite for reviewing this, and writing this entire introduction?

I have broken a rule set up for this season by reviewing a film made by The Asylum company. I was willing to break the rules here because this movie seemed to be an exception from the material that made me put that rule up in the first place. It’s not about an overgrown, CGI fish monster but a low budget musical designed to take advantage of the High School Musical phenomenon and also be part of the company’s Faith Films subdivision, designed to make Christian themed films. Getting hold of this film was for the promise of a terrible movie, a concept that, as this season has gone on, is pretty questionable now, but in hindsight a genre that is usually extravagantly made turned into such a minuscule budgeted, Christian film was also a fascinating proposition. This kind of melding of genres and concepts in unexpected ways is like viewing abstract Non-Euclidean geometry within a HP Lovecraft story, trying to imagine all of its parts working together without going insane. The film itself is, well, what I have sadly come to expect from The Asylum company; as much as I want to love them, it feels like I keep going back to them like an idiot, as all of us who have reviewed their films, as they secretly praise us for the reviews even if they are negative ones.

When he is transferred to a new school, and away from his adored choir and friends, Zachery (Chris Chatman) finds it difficult to connect to his environment. His grades are failing, the choir at his new school are hopeless in terms of their musical abilities, and the church of his old choir is in danger of closing because of finance issues. However, it is possible that, through joining together the choirs, and winning a competition, that every problem can be solved, all the while he slowly connects to the leader of the new choir Savannah (Candine Lakota) who has to overcome losing her mother only a few months earlier. In the film’s favour, the cast for the most part, especially Chatman, have musical talent; it is great that for such an ill advised take on a musical that there are people in front of the camera who can sing and have charisma, and there are moments where the music they are singing too is trying to be good. Unfortunately, for most of the film, it is also music at its most generic and sterilised rather than really good songs. This could be only my personal taste, but when songs have the same tone and sound to each other it is not a good sign. For the most part, it is merely bland and innocuous, but as with the song set around a bench, it can become terrible.

Sunday School Musical outside the music is worthless. Chatman had the potential to be someone special, if he had made anymore films after this 2008 production, but the rest of the film is cheap looking. It is sad that the practices of former exploitative film companies have not been continued for the most part this era; at least Roger Corman and Italian film producers would hire talented directors and film making personal and let them make whatever they want as long as it could be marketed for cinemas. Even Godfrey Ho had a sense of fun. In this era – where blockbusters hog the cinemas, and digital film cameras and computer effects are cheap – laziness has sadly been allowed to come into this sub culture of cinema. Even straight-to-video films from the yesteryear could attempt to be great works, and while there are still great films made today, wading for them in the mass is even more difficult.

Sunday School Musical is bland looking; unnecessarily frequent and choppy in its editing, and just dull to sit through. I am more likely to sleep through another viewing of this than feel pain. As a cash-grab for High School Musical, which I admit to having not viewed alongside its sequels, it is a half-hearted attempt at a musical that could have been special even if it was a failure. The Cannon Group, back in the 1980s, would have tried something special even on a pittance. The Aslyum group, from Almighty Thor (2011), which I reviewed for this blog, to this, are exceptionally lackadaisical in their attitude.

And what makes this even more disconcerting is that this is supposed to be a Christian film. There is very little in the film that really delves into faith or Christian values at all. It has choirs as it main plot and Savannah’s father is a preacher, but this seems arbitrary. It could be argued that these types of films don’t have to directly tackle issues of faith, but this is pointless as there are films already made that Christians enjoy and gain a lot from, and if there wasn’t, they could make their own films rather than rely on someone like The Asylum. A Christian film for me, as it stands now, should tackle the issues of faith in ordinary life, which Sunday School Musical fails to do at all and instead panders to a lame interpretation of R&B and hip-hop music lacking the bite and meaning to it. Alongside 2012 Doomsday (2008), another of these faith based films by the company I’ve seen, there is something exceptionally wrong about The Asylum’s attitude to these films that Corman or an Italian producer, even Ho, is completely innocent of. Not only are they making lazy rip-offs of blockbusters rather than fun ones like the Italians could make, but it can be argued that they are conning Christians, who would want movies for them, without any attempt at making something interesting. As an agnostic^[1], I can see how something like Sunday School Musical, in its lifelessness, would be insulting to the Christian god, like offering a turd to Him as some kind of sacrificial gift and excepting to be lavished with praise.

And the worst part? I am dumb enough to review another film from them after my bile for Almighty Thor. Admittedly, I had hope for this to be something interesting from The Asylum, and I still want to see Mega Piranha (2010) and their take on the Halloween films, but I have tricked myself again even if I spent only 50p for a second hand disc. Are all of us who review these films, even mock them, just encouraging this sort of filmmaking paradoxically? For all the criticisms I’ve had with the film, I’ve just encouraged more people to watch this film when it should be ignored and vanish from existence. I could have scrapped this review to do this, but to both stroke my ego and out of need to write about this film, I have to post it. If the phrase ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’ ever applied to any context, this is the perfect time to use it. On my part, I may go for three and please The Asylum again, or actually have some common sense next time.

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[1] Pass six years, I'm also not an agnostic as I wrote this review but a spiritual person, as a result of discovering that I had entirely misinterpreted what "agnostic" meant. Being "Agnostic", which I didn't know writing this review, is actually closer in spectrum to atheism rather than not knowing what a divine godhead might be, but with some philsophical differences of importance, if you research its theological and philosophical beginnings even on Wikipedia. That does leave me in the annoying position of believing in an entity upstairs and soul, but not with any organised religious ship to anchor myself to. Also "spiritualist" doesn't roll off the tongue and just evokes charlatan Victorians Harry Houdini particularly hated, so its a position in dire need of a marketing department to come up with a name for. 

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Bonus: Fist of the North Star (Director: Tony Randel, 1995)

My knowledge of Fist of the North Star is very limited, but a British Kenshiro who looks like the muscular brother of Benedict Cumberbatch, who can still make your head explode, was not what I was expecting but utterly hilarious.

Despite being part of the wave of pop culture films from the 1990s that I am obsessed over, visually part of the era and crammed with the obsessions (end of the world scenario, a cast with everyone from director Melvin Van Peebles to pro-wrestler Vader), it is pretty tedious however. Even if Chris Penn steals every scene he is in, the film’s narrative is incredibly generic and for a film that needs good fight scenes to work, the compromise to their presentation, and the gore from the original manga removed for the most part, undermines the whole project. I’ve never been a fan of Tony Randel, especially of his second Hellraiser film, and I wonder what this’ll been like if it was allowed to be good or as insane as a film like Street Fighter from the same era.