The Fighting Temptations (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Musical	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Additional Footage-8 Extended Music Numbers Alternative Version-7 Extended Scenes Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	117:49
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (71:58)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jonathan Lynn
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Cuba Gooding jr Beyonce Knowles The O'Jays Ann Nesby Faith Evans Melba Moore LaTanya Washington Ricky Dillard Larry John Meyers Shirley Caesar LaTanya Richardson Wendell Pierce Lou Myers
Case	?
RPI	$34.95	Music	Jimmy Jam Beyoncé Knowles LL Cool J

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Greek English Spanish Croatian Italian Hebrew Portuguese Slovenian Serbian Spanish Titling Italian Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, a town which only drinks softdrink...even in bars
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    I am a big music buff and I am specifically a fan of soul, blues, gospel and funk. This made me want to review this movie despite knowing that it had been received poorly by the critics and had done badly at the box office.

    Let's start by talking about the music in the film as this will allow me to be positive. There are some wonderful musical performances here by some great musical talents, some of whom were previously big stars and others who are big stars now. Most of the music is gospel although there is some rap and modern R&B thrown in. The singers include:

• Beyonce Knowles (Former lead singer of Destiny's Child) - She plays the lead female role Lilli and sings quite a few tunes including some modern R&B numbers and some gospel tunes fronting the choir. It is great to see her going back to her gospel roots.
• Angie Stone - Plays the local dry-cleaner and sings some great tunes during the film. She is quite a successful recording artist in modern soul.
• The O'Jays - Play the local barbers. They also sing some great stuff here including an excellent version of Loves me like a Rock. For those who are not aware, the O'Jays were a big soul group in the late 1960s and early 1970s scoring hits such as Backstabbers, Love Train & 992 Arguments. If you have never heard of them and like soul music, go out and get one of their early CDs now!
• Melba Moore - Plays a choir member. Melba is a well-known soul singer.
• Rev Shirley Caesar - Plays a visiting choir leader. She is one of the best known gospel choir leaders in the US.
• Montell Jordan - Plays a prisoner who joins the choir. A modern R&B singer well known in the US.
• The Blind Boys of Alabama - These guys are the real deal, a gospel group which has been touring and performing for 60 years! They appear in the Concert at the end of the film. Their full performance is in the extras.
• Ann Nesby - Appears as Aunt Sally. She was previously the lead singer of the successful gospel choir, Sounds of Blackness.
• Faith Evans - Plays Cuba Gooding Jr's mother. A modern R&B hip hop recording artist.
• Bilal - A contemporary R&B singer. Appears singing a duet with Beyonce in a club.
• Zane - Formerly Lil' Zane. A well-known rapper
• T-Bone - Plays a prisoner who joins the choir. A Christian rapper.

    All of these people are successful recording artists and contribute some great musical performances, although personally I could have lived without the rappers. I can only assume they were added to bring in a younger audience. The musical highlight for me was definitely the O'Jays still looking and sounding great.

    Now, on to the plot of this film. A young boy, Darrin Hill (the older version of whom is played by Cuba Gooding Jr) and his mother, MaryAnn (Faith Evans) leave their home town of Monte Carlo, Georgia because the mother wants to pursue a singing career and the sister of the preacher, Paulina (LaTanya Richardson), will not allow her to sing secular music and continue to be a member of the choir. His father died in Vietnam. She follows her dream but only becomes moderately successful singing in clubs and the like. When he is a teenager she dies in a car accident. Darrin grows up in New York and becomes a successful advertising executive by fabricating his educational qualifications. On day he gets fired, and on the same day he finds out that his Aunt Sally (Ann Nesby) has died and he is requested to attend the funeral and the reading of the will. The will says that he will inherit shares worth $150,000 if he leads the local church's gospel choir to the Gospel Explosion and wins. Initially, he only goes along with this for the money (which he needs badly), but soon he begins to enjoy himself and starts to fall for a local single mother, Lilli (Beyonce Knowles). (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) The ending is exactly what you would expect from this beginning - he finds his soul, gets the girl and wins the competition.

    Cuba Gooding Jr was nominated for a Razzie for his performance here which is probably a little bit unfair, but considering that he doesn't sing he doesn't really participate in the highlight of this film, the music, other than acting the fool while leading the choir. As you can tell from the plot summary, this film is full of clichés and you have seen the plot many times before in every film that starts with the reading of a will, of which there have been many. This film reminds me very much of Blues Brothers 2000 - excellent musical set pieces desperately in search of a movie. The biggest difference is that this one is not the sequel to an excellent film. The movie is also far too long at 2 hours.

   If you feel the need to know, the name The Fighting Temptations is because Lilli says those words at one point and Darrin decides to name the choir that for the competition.

    Overall, if you like Gospel, soul or modern R&B this may be worth seeing for the musical numbers but the film itself is very ordinary.

Video

    The video quality is excellent.

    The feature is presented in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is very close to the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

    The picture was clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise. Shadow detail was excellent with night scenes showing all required details.

    The colour was excellent throughout with all colours being well saturated and free from colour bleeding. The skin colouring was very natural.

    There were no noticeable artefacts.

    There are subtitles in eleven languages including English. I sampled the English subtitles and they were clear, easy to read and reasonably close to the spoken word if somewhat summarised.

    This is a dual layered disc and the layer change is well placed but causes a bit of a pause at 71:58.
    

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is very good, especially the music.

    This DVD contains three audio options: an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s and the same in Spanish & Italian.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times.    

    There were no problems with audio sync in the dialogue although the musical numbers were obviously not recorded at the time of filming and there are sometimes some minor audio sync issues in them.    

    The music in the film is excellent with many great songs from the cast mentioned above and original music by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis & Michael Kamen. The music comes across very well and uses all six channels of the Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding. It sounds fantastic. The music is the absolute highlight of the film.

    The surround speakers were used quite a lot for music but for very little else.

    The subwoofer was used throughout for the music.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu includes a scene selection function, music and pictures from the film. The menu system seemed very slow to me which became annoying.

Extended Music Numbers - 8

    These musical numbers are as follows

• Heaven Knows - Faith Evans (4:49). A complete version of her number from the film which is quite good.
• Everything I Do - Beyonce & Bilal (4:03). Another complete version of a modern R&B number included in the film. This is duet performed during a scene in a nightclub. Beyonce fans would definitely enjoy this one.
• Loves Me Like A Rock - The O'Jays (2:30). A musical highlight for me. This is the full version of a song included in the film in the barber shop scene. They are great singers but not very convincing barbers.
• Down By The Riverside/To da River - The O'Jays, T-Bone, Zane & Montell Jordan (4:49). This starts out as a traditional reading of the old tune, which then breaks into a rap based on the old tune. Personally I would have preferred to stick with the traditional reading but that's just me.
• Darrin Leads The Choir - Rain Down - Angie Stone & Eddie LeVert Sr (The O'Jays) (2:56) This is not really an extended musical sequence. It is more truthfully a version of this song with the camera focussed totally on Cuba Gooding Jr instead of the performers.
• Soldier - The Blind Boys of Alabama (4:05) This is the full version of a song from the concert at the end of the movie. It is a great tune by one of the great gospel groups. Video quality is quite poor during some of this performance which is a shame.
• Waiting - Ramiyah (3:44) Ramiyah are a modern gospel group consisting of 4 young African American girls. This is their full performance from the concert at the end of the film.
• Won't Ever Change - Mary, Mary (3:39) Mary, Mary are a modern gospel group of 2 sisters (neither called Mary). This is their full performance from the concert at the end of the film.

Extended Scenes - 7

    These scenes are as follows

• On The Way To The Funeral (0:55). A longer conversation in the car on the way to the funeral about 2Pac. Rubbish.
• Rounding Up The Choir (7:31). A long extra sequence involving rounding up various members of the choir including the token white man & woman (Rue McClanahan). Some pieces are OK. Others deserved to be cut.
• Lucius talks about Booty (1:00). A longer version of a vaguely funny sequence in the film by comedian Mike Epps.
• Jimmy B & Briggs (1:13). Pointless.
• Darrin Breakdances (0:46) Extended version of the Darrin character breakdancing to the music. Pointless.
• Darrin & Lucius in the Car (0:28) This is really an outtake of a stuff-up, not an extended or deleted scene.
• Reed Takes Darrin for a Taxi Ride (0:42) Pointless.

Theatrical Trailer (2:26)

    Not a bad trailer featuring (as the movie does) some good music.

    This movie is available on a very similar disc in Region 1 with the exception of  the Region 1 disc having extra trailers for other films. Region 4 gets the nod due to PAL/NTSC differences.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The disc has some extras of reasonable quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall