Show sees no middle ground between singing a stodgy hymn and “getting one’s groove on,” so Deloris gives the choir not just a modern lift but songs and moves at which the Village People might balk. Instead of reaching out to help the outside world, these nuns simply co-opt its music and dance. She takes them to the streets to minister and heal, thus teaching the order’s stern head that she was wrong to wall up her charges from the outside world out of fear.īy replacing this subtle theme with a ho-hum conflict between free expression and establishment repressiveness, “Sister Act: The Musical” becomes a generic celebration of self and vaguely defined goodness. Vain and feckless Deloris Van Cartier learns self-sacrifice out of respect for the nuns’ touching faith. Joseph Howard’s screenplay declared that the religious and secular realms can peacefully co-exist - indeed, that each needs the other to survive.
Scenes, lines, even entire performances are carbon copies of the original. Broad outlines of film and tuner are the same: Having witnessed a murder by her mobster boyfriend, a down-and-out lounge singer is given witness protection in a down-and-out convent, where she turns the traditionalist choir into a contempo ensemble that revitalizes church and community alike.
