Sisiter Act 2: Back in the habit Starring Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Najimy, Lauryn Hill, James Coburn and Maggie Smith. Directed by Bill Duke. Category I. Showing at Dynasty, Liberty, Park, Prince, and UA Sha Tin.
WHOOPI Goldberg's Sister Act was one of the more curious hits of 1992, being little more than an uninspired reworking of overused gags and comic situations. Hardly a hard act to follow. The sequel is, for the most part, just another rehash - even more formulaic, if that is possible. Yet, although by rights Sister Act 2 should have decayed a further generation, it actually has slightly more charm and energy than the first. Plus, most of the music is at least bearable this time around.
This is mainly because there is a lot less of Goldberg and The Singing Nuns, who are usurped here by a 1990s hip-hop version of the kids from Fame, at least three of whom are accomplished singers (even if one, the multi-faceted juvenile lead Lauryn Hill, does overdo it on the Whitney Houston all-talent-no-taste brand of vocal virtuosity).
When the music is bad, though, it is horrid, and never worse than in Goldberg's big, partly tongue-in-cheek show opener which establishes her as having climbed the career ladder from club singer (via 1992's spell in the nunnery) to unlikely Las Vegas headliner.
Then the sisters come calling with their paper-thin sequel scenario and - as the title puts it - in, mercifully, the only nun pun left which hadn't been used the first time round - it's 'back in the habit' for Deloris Van Cartier.
This film, apart from the rapping, could have been made any time between 1935 and now. It recalls some fairly awful 'hip' kids' movies with social-consciences from the 1960s - in particular one with Elvis Presley and Mary Tyler Moore as a street-smart ghetto nun from 1967.
