A change of pace for horrormeister Wes Craven, although the title (God knows) is pretty horrible. Originally it was to be 50 Violins: much better even before you know the significance. These instruments, purchased cheap on a family sojourn in Greece, are the personal possessions of one Roberta Guaspari, and they form the foundation of her innovative musical program in a tough East Harlem school, after her husband walks out on her and she is obliged to start a new life. The fact-based story had been told already in the documentary Small Wonders, and the retelling of it here, under the banner of Miramax, is more like something that would come under the banner of Miramax's parent company, Disney (something, in specific, like Mr. Holland's Opus): canned inspirationalism, rigged with a couple of straw-man villains (a tenured drudge in charge of the Music Department, a faceless budget-cutting Board of Education), some unsuspenseful suspense ("What about a benefit concert?"), a long-drawn-out triumph at Carnegie Hall, a standing ovation. Craven, nonetheless, is lucky in his leading lady, Meryl Streep. (Originally it was to be Madonna: scarier to think about than any Craven fright fest.) Streep is a showeringly, almost suffocatingly generous actress, and she sets up a separate tempo within the film, practically a separate film within the film, struggling against the formulaic, foreordained, forced-march drift of the plot, struggling to make every moment vivid and alive and immediate. (Just look, for a single instance, at her posture in the back seat of the cab as she gets her first glimpses of Harlem: as if frozen at the very brink of a cringe.) Hers is a losing struggle, but all the same a valiant one. And the only relevant one. The movie comes in for none of the glory of Guaspari's violin program. It can only bask. With Aidan Quinn, Angela Bassett, Gloria Estefan. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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