Reverend Mother: Girl groups? Boogie woogie on the piano? What were you thinking?
Sister Mary Clarence: I was thinking more like Vegas, you know, get some butts in the seats.
Two films that detail the hip Whoopi Goldberg as Reno lounge singer Delores Van Cartier who hides at a Convent and helps the other nuns out by introducing "heathen" ideals with a sense of joy and excitement instead of solemnity in their music.
In the first
Sister Act Delores witnesses her
Mafioso boyfriend commit a murder. She is entered into
Witness Protection and forcibly inducted into an abbey, where the only person who knows "Sister Mary Clarence" is in witness protection is Mother Superior. Delores has to follow the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, hard work and getting up at 6 AM. Despite her dire situation, and her thought patterns weren't especially holy before, she finds ways to rebell and is in a constant struggle against Mother Superior.
In a last ditch effort to get her to truly act like a nun, she is also inducted into the abbey choir, where situations put her in a position to straighten it up. After getting them to actually sing in tune, she decides to
make her own improvements by combining spirituals and R&B...
Hilarity Ensues... with a tamborine.
A very popular film, arguably Whoopi Goldbergs' best role ever. Despite the Mafia storyline, the real story comes from how the amazing music from the choir restores church attendance and that music is often the one thing that can bring people together.
In
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Delores returns to visit her old friends at the convent and finds that the community school they've been teaching at is slowly going under. Delores agrees to return as Sister Mary Clarence and teach the music class to a large group of very disinterested teenagers (led by a young Lauryn Hill). After the requisite pranks being pulled on her, she strikes back in her own way and humbles the kids so that she can work with them.
Finding out about a state choir contest and the kids have a knack for harmonizing, she decides to shape up the kids by forming a choir and intergrating it into the music they like... her specialty.
The movie certainly has its moments, although hampered by a fairly weak method of getting Delores back.
Tropes:
