Beyonce fever

Given that this is a movie designed to show off the considerable singing talents of its star, Beyonce, it goes some way beyond its origins as an extended MTV video. The plot may be predictable but it is a marginally enjoyable entertainment, even for those who cannot tell Beyonce Knowles from a bouncy castle.

Knowles plays Lily, a feisty single mother in the poor Southern town of Monte Carlo, Georgia. Her status as a "fallen woman" and the fact that she sings the devil's music in a local bar has alienated her from the members of the local Church of Beulah. When a former resident of Monte Carlo, Darren (Cuba Gooding Jr), arrives from New York - where he has been fired from his job in advertising - for his aunt's funeral, Lily recognises him as the young boy who used to chat her up on the church steps.

A financially overextended buppie, Darren is delighted to find that he has inherited $150,000 from his aunt - on the proviso that he whips the church singers into shape for a state-wide battle of the gospel choirs. Trouble is, the few members who comprise the choir are truly dreadful.

Directed by British expatriate Jonathan Lynne, this is forgettable, innocuous froth that goes in one eye and out of the other. After a slow beginning, the humour heats up when the local characters are brought into play, including the preacher and his ferocious sister, who quotes church bylaws as if they were scripture.

A shamelessly feelgood movie with a lightweight moral theme involving honesty, prejudice and hypocrisy, it narrowly keeps its head above the cliches by virtue of its attractive star and musical numbers, which are tremendously effective without being overproduced.

I particularly liked the white, gun-toting, whisky-swilling redneck drafted in to play the organ, and the three prisoners who perform in their orange boilersuits, watched over by shotgun-wielding guards. But ultimately this is Beyonce's show and she surreptitiously steals the movie. If nothing else, her rendition of the Peggy Lee standard Fever is enough to raise any man's temperature.

The Fighting Temptations
Cert: certPG