To me, this movie is perfection.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Stet Tate is tough and living with his struggling single mom. His teacher tries to get him to audition for Carvelle (Dustin Hoffman) but he takes off only to find his mother had died. His biological father Gerard Owens (Josh Lucas) would rather keep him a secret from his family. Gerard puts him in the boarding school National Boychoir Academy run by the headmistress (Kathy Bates) and choir master Carvelle. Drake (Eddie Izzard) is infuriated by the lowering of entrance standards. However, Stet's natural singing talents and drive put him in the touring group. Soon, he's in conflict with Devon, the star of the group.Hoffman takes a similar tack as Whiplash but ends up being more like Mr. Holland. The young lead shows some capabilities but it may be asking too much. It's also may be asking too much to make choir singing compelling. It does a relatively good job to make this particular competitive world interesting but choir singing is not exactly toe tapping. Overall, it works up to a point.

But that's not what really matters in a feel good movie, now does it? If you think it does maybe the actors can convince you otherwise. There's a lot of great acting talent at hand, that should leave you satisfied and occupied during the running time of the movie. Because you may not care too much about what is going on, when you know the outcome all along, the road is what is important.It's more than finely made and as mentioned with the acting talent at hand you couldn't go wrong even if you tried to. The music is more than integral and will leave you speechless at times, if you're open to it of course. The hardships of following up your dream or at least your goal are always there and may feel like a drag if you've been watching too many movies, but that's not this movies fault

The music in this film is almost all modified, some might say butchered, to fit the needs of the editing and pacing. The modified versions, however, are beautifully sung. So much for the purists among us. Since this problem is well covered by other reviewers here, let me move on.The DVD extras reveal that in the minds of the filmmakers - director, actors, et al. - a central "message" of the movie is the too-familiar cliché of films pointed at children, that one can achieve anything with enough determination, hard work, and perseverance. To make that premise work, our hero, Stet (Garrett Wareing) must struggle with failure, hopelessness, rejection and conflict -- which he does -- and must overcome it using tools he discovers inside himself -- which he also does. What he does *not* do - or rather, what the script does not allow him to do - is give us a clue about where the miracle of his serial transformations comes from. We are left with a roller-coaster ride in which at takeoff he is troubled and seemingly alone, and at the end he is triumphant. Along the way, all we see are the peaks and valleys, with no view of the tracks he's riding on, the weather conditions, or even his real reason for taking the ride in the first place. I realize that to solve this problem, you might need the cinematic equivalent of Wagner's Ring (a 21-hour opera), so maybe it's too much to ask. It could also be solved by having a hero who has dreamed of joining a boychoir and prepared himself for years, whose difficulty is only the fact that he hasn't had the chance until opportunity unexpectedly knocks. That way we'd already know why (and how) he is able to overcome the obstacles that the rigorous choir standards put in his way.I cannot leave this review without a serious condemnation of this film's injustice to Händel's Messiah, specifically his chorus, Hallelujah (Part the Second, No.44 in most editions). Other reviews have rightly criticised this mistreatment as unworthy of a serious film about a world class boychoir. (I might add that I am astonished that the American Boychoir even agreed to record it in the first place.) It would have been unconscionable enough, had the filmmakers merely added the descant with the sycophantic high-D to the "arrangement" as it appeared in the film. But they went even further, and inserted a conversation into the script in which Drake (poor, clueless, brilliant Eddie Izzard who should have been able to depend on the scriptwriters for historical accuracy) proposes that they "one-up" the Vienna Boys Choir by writing a descant - "we write a new solo part; they were all doing it back in those days; keep it in the same key, and hit a high D". At first blush he's right - descants were commonplace, and are still being written today - but for hymns and folk songs, not fully-composed pieces, published in authorised editions, such as Messiah. I would surrender my entire reputation - undergraduate music degree, sixteen years of professional (i.e., paid) choral singing, and a thorough familiarity with Messiah performance practice going back to 1960, when I was fourteen - if anyone can document even a single instance of a solo descant being associated with Hallelujah in any creditable edition or performance. A descant hovering over Hallelujah would be rather like a beautiful sunset painted over the countryside behind the Mona Lisa. Sunsets are beautiful crowd-pleasers, but for over 500 years, the Mona Lisa as originally portrayed has been quite enough for viewers to marvel at. So with Hallelujah: pleasing crowds quite adequately, thank you, since 1741. The worst result, of course, is that this ill-advised detour from history and musicality may well be viewed by some young musician who will naïvely regard it as truth, since it was presented in such a realistic setting. Inexcusable only begins to describe it.

Anyone attending a graduation ceremony at the American Boychoir School, as I did a few hours before seeing this film in Princeton, would be impressed with its tremendous and infectious school spirit. It is a joyous group of young people who uphold one another and love being together. Their enthusiasm has been buoyed up, and deservedly so, by the choir's glowing work in this film. As others have already noted, the singing is glorious, and one hopes is an audience's most lasting takeaway.One's heart goes out to Stet, at first sight perhaps not the kind of boy one would expect to be smitten to the core within a moment of hearing such music. But he was! Given a chance to join, he is afraid to try at first, because failure and rejection would hurt so much. Time and again, it was the exquisite beauty of what he heard around him that drove him on, even when it seemed out of reach.Aside from that-- I very much wanted to love this movie more than I'm ultimately able to do. Especially given its every suggestion that it is a portrayal of life in the American Boychoir School (or any choral foundation for that matter), we must bear in mind, IT IS FICTION! For according to the movie, this is a grim life in a hostile place, in which a boy might find no friends, no teamwork, and even a faculty member or two implacably opposed to his very presence. We see only merciless competition and rivalry, sometimes descending to unscrupulous malice for which the guilty peer gets only a slap on the wrist. This is not the stuff of which a great ensemble, as the American Boychoir clearly is, can be made. Alas, in this respect I fear that the scriptwriter and director have done a disservice to the art and institution that they meant to promote.This is a serious matter at a time when plenty of choir school graduates go on to the most prestigious high schools in the country, and plenty of parents dream of exactly this outcome from the moment their child is born. To a large extent, it is the immersion in great music that does this. Yet the dots don't get connected: there is a shortage of applicants to choir schools, among other excellent boarding schools for children of this age, both here and abroad. Interested families understandably want to be assured that they will find a supportive, nurturing atmosphere in which every pupil is almost guaranteed to flourish happily. This is what such schools provide, as their students and alumni enthusiastically report. Reading music is patiently taught, not a prerequisite for admission. But you'd never guess it from the film.If others feel that this single reservation I have expressed is too harsh, nothing would please me more. Boy goes to choir school and becomes a success. "Predictable", people say, as if this were a criticism. But oh how right they are.