Preaching to the Choir

While the film looks good, sense of place is never very convincing. Over time, however, director Charles Randolph Wright and screenwriters Kevin Heffernan and Peter E. Lengyel do manage to create well-defined characters, whose flaws are as important as their gifts.

The whole movie is too predictable, its conflicts either forced or simplistic.

A religious feel-good message, first and foremost. As for drama, well, it's a distant second. For the right audience, however, this reversal of priorities will work just fine.

Call this one "Brother Act." Instead of Whoopi Goldberg's Reno lounge singer in "Sister Act," Preaching to the Choir has a hip-hop star hiding out from a gangsta record producer in his estranged brother-minister's Harlem church.

Formulaic but innocuous little movie's one clever moment, a sing-off between choirs standing on their respective church steps, trying to lure in Sunday-morning worshippers.