Sister Act Turns 25 Today.

Forgotten garbage

[quote]The original screenplay was written for Bette Midler who eventually turned it down and later admitted to regretting doing so The screenplay was rewritten by various writers

And the movie never really made total sense. For example, in the casino when the gangsters are searching for Deloris, all they had to do was say "Look for a black nun." But nooooooo, they have to run through the casino pretending that is was difficult to find her.

I remember loving this when I was a kid, I saw it a few years ago and I didn't laugh once. It's actually a fairly mediocre film.

Jim Beaver once told us on Usenet back in the day that he hated Harvey Keitel after working with him on Sister Act. Said something about how Keitel had no redeeming qualities as a human being whatsoever.

R4 Keitel has always come across as a sleaze.

I'm more of a Sister Act 2 type of guy.

Sister Act is a great example of a 90s comedy that was funny at the time but doesn't hold up as well 25 years later. I know as OP said that Bette Midler was offered the role before Whoopi Goldberg, I think Bette would have been much better in the role. What do you gals think?

Fun movie, the sort of enjoyable piffle that Hollywood's forgotten how to make.

The British "Nuns on the Run" was made around the same time, and it's a better movie.

Sister Act is a lighthearted comedy that like R8 said Hollywood doesn't make anymore.

R7 Bette would have been much better than Whoopi in the role I agree.

I really miss the comedies or even a good romcom. Now, it seems they just churn out blow em up and action heroes. How many times can they make a Fast and Furious?

Wasn't it written by gay man Paul Rudnick?

So Mo'Nique wasn't the first African American actress to refuse to promote a movie.

R11, he was credited as "Joseph Howard." Apparently he didn't want to be associated with it.

Bette turned down the movie because she's gotten negative reactions to one of her earliest films The Thorn in which she played the Virgin Mary. As a Jew, she didn't want to piss off the Catholics again.

Whoopi's career went south along with the horrid sequel which she filmed while obnoxiously wearing a specially-printed T-shirt around the studio lot likening herself to a slave which gave sane people a case of the eyerolls considering she was getting paid $10 million for a movie.

I wonder what happened to Buckwheat Bertha.

Midler? Look, Whoopi was barely believable as a mobster's girlfriend, but Midler?

She could only be the wife he married 30 years ago, to his everlasting regret.

Whoopi also did the anti-apartheid musical [italic]Sarafina![/italic], a Miramax release for which Touchstone put up part of the money (foreshadowing Miramax becoming part of their world a year later) around the same time.

Whoopi wore a t-shirt shirt that said "Niagteer" at Disney- that didn't last long.

Whoopi hated doing Sister Act. Apparently the original script was fairly weak and had to be rewritten several times. The revised script wasn't finished when shooting began and there were several days where Whoopi and the cast had to wait hours for revisions to come in so they could shoot the scene. Also Whoopi butted heads with Disney executives over creative differences although she got along with the director of the film very well. When filming was completed, Whoopi refused to promote it and she expected it would bomb at the box office but it ended up becoming one of the highest grossing films of 1992.

Disney wanted a sequel and Whoopi only agreed to do it if she get a cut of the profits, a $7 million paycheck (that was the highest salary for an actress in Hollywood at that time) and creative approval for the script. Probably explains why Sister Act 2 was a lackluster follow up.

For years, Disney tried to get Goldberg to agree to a third film and only now is she willing.

R17 Touchstone is a Disney label, not a separate studio. It was launched in 1984, in order to release non G-rated fare. Miramax became one, too, after the Weinsteins sold out... I mean, Disney bought it in 1993.

Even though "Sister Act" was a bitch to film (by all accounts), they must've been relieved (especially Maggie "pay the rent" Smith) when it became a huge, bonafide hit. It was #6 domestically and #8 worldwide.

Wow! I had no idea it was such a troubled production. I think it's a pretty fun, amusing film. Not great art, but I loved it as a kid. The sequel I always went back and forth on. It was watchable I guess. It definitely does have the feeling of one of those Touchstone Bette Milder vehicles, so I was surprised to hear that she was the first choice.

...I actually don't think Bette would have been as good as Whoopi was.

And Whoopi did Theodore Rex. She's got no right to look down her nose at this.

The casting made it work.

[quote][R17] Touchstone is a Disney label, not a separate studio. It was launched in 1984, in order to release non G-rated fare. Miramax became one, too, after the Weinsteins sold out... I mean, Disney bought it in 1993.

Now someone else owns Miramax and there is barely any Touchstone to speak of anymore now that their deal with Dreamworks is over with. The whole ratings system is a joke anyway, and it's infested TV; once [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic] got slapped with a TV-PG in reruns, I knew they were meaningless.

Well to the movie's credit, it did have Kathy Najimy.

[quote]Whoopi wore a t-shirt shirt that said "Niagteer" at Disney- that didn't last long.

I think you mean "nigateer."

Carrie Fisher was script doctor for that movie-mainly Whoopie's lines. Both were just honored as Disney Legends a couple weeks ago.

[quote]Carrie Fisher was script doctor for that movie-mainly Whoopie's lines.

What movie?

Midler regretted not doing SISTER ACT after it became a huge success. It was one of the Top Ten grossers of 1992. It's why she agreed to do HOCUS POCUS for Disney. Unfortunately, that movie was a critical and box office bomb. However, Midler got the last laugh. The film became a childhood staple on home video and is now an annual Halloween tradition. A cult classic. In fact, last week, they just did a 25th Anniversary TV special. I don't know many kids who even know SISTER ACT or its sequel, unless they're African-American.

Best Paul Rudnick line ever is from this film:

Sister Mary Patrick : [in the casino, to hardened gamblers] "Hi, excuse me, sorry. Has anyone seen a nun? A Carmelite nun? No? Sure? OK, thanks."

R30,Ii doubt you know many kids, period, let alone black ones.

This movie made Kathy Najimy a star. Maggie Smith was also quite good in this.

It's a good movie back when they still made decent comedies.. If you thought it was terrible then, imagine how worse it would be if it was made today.

Sister Mary Robert's singing voice was dubbed.

And it includes DL fave Mary Wickes.

R30 In all honesty, I don't think the film would have worked as well with Bette in the lead. I think Bette would have been too over the top in the role compared to Whoopi who underplayed it in an attempt to ground what really is a surreal story. You can tell Whoopi doesn't really want to be in the movie (reportedly Whoopi hated making the film due to the constant rewrites and the fact the actors would be left waiting on set while scenes were completely rewritten) and that actually works for Delores who doesn't want to be at the convent.

The best part of the film was the nuns. And it gave work to some older broadway names like the great Susan Browning, Beth Fowler, etc. AND, of course, Mary Wickes who basically recreated her nun role from The Trouble With Angels and that's just fine. Midler would have been much better. I never thought Whoopi was funny and I think she's a much better dramatic actress.

I like Whoopi as an actress, especially in Ghost.

[quote]Mary Wickes who basically recreated her nun role from The Trouble With Angels

I think casting Mary Wickes was sort of a sly nod to The Trouble With Angels.

R32 my older sister has run a daycare from her home for 13 years and also babysits older kids after school. They're a mix of black, white, and Latinos; no Asians. They all seem to know HOCUS POCUS (especially around this time) but I've noticed that it's mainly the black kids who know the SISTER ACT movies. I'm also a bit of a theater geek, so the other group I've run into that knows the film have become familiar with it because of the musical. Granted, this is all anecdotal evidence.

my siblings and I watched Ghost and Sister Act tApes at least 100 times in the early 90s. I still have fond memories and btw, we're not black but loved Whoopi because of these movies.

I remember Whoopi being salty and bitchy around this period. She basically dismissed the sequel and you could tell she was doing it for the money.

And when she was promoting Corrina, Corrina, s reporter asked her about her co-star Tina Majorino and the reporter complimented Tina's performance and Whoopi snapped back "Well, that's her job." That's when I stopped being a fan. She came across as arrogant, cold and a bitch.

The movie would have been so much better with Bette.

I think being the highest-paid actress in Hollywood in 1993/1994 went to Whoopi's head.

I think Whoopi is pretty great in the movie. I had no idea it was re-written so much. It feels fairly coherent, so I'm surprised by that. I always enjoyed it ever since I was a kid. This and Hocus Pocus were probably the two most rented movies of my childhood and most people over 20 seem to still know and adore them.

I saw it in the theater when it came out and I loved it. My fellow moviegoers and I cackled all the way through the "My God" number. Yeah, it's dated now, but I stop and watch if it's on when I'm channel-surfing.

R41 same here. But I'm talking about the passage of time. GHOST is still well-remembered and beloved, but SISTER ACT doesn't seem to be as widely known, from my experience.

Incidentally, why didn't they make the stage show a jukebox musical, utilizing the popular songs from the film and incorporating other Motown hits? I can't stand the show nor the new original score, Alan Menken or not.

Stupid then, stupid now.

[quote]black, white, and Latinos; no Asians.

Why no Asians? Do they also say no fats or fems?

Marc Shaiman did the music. He had been Bette's music director and also done some film score work, but I think this was one of his first gold-star musical comedy gigs. Nowadays he's largely immersed in and loved by the Broadway community.

Strange, though, that when they wanted to adapt Sister Act for the stage, they didn't ask him to do the score? Alan Menken did some okay work but it would have really been fun to hear Marc take another swing at that ball.

R49 LOL! No, nothing like that. We just don't have an Asian population in our area. It's mainly white, with 20% Hispanic/Latino and 5% black.

R45 Paul Rudnick wrote the original screenplay but after Bette Midler turned it down and Whoopi was brought in, the screenplay underwent numerous rewrites that continued well into production. People who worked on the Sister Act screenplay throughout its production included Carrie Fisher and Nancy Meyers. I remember reading one of the early drafts of the film on the web years ago and while a lot of the situations found in the original script survived to the movie, a great deal of the dialogue was changed. Whoopi believed she was working on a bomb to the extent that she refused to promote the film. She also didn't want to do a sequel until she was offered the largest pay of any actress in Hollywood history up to that point.

It's no "Nunsense."

IMO the sequel lacks all the warmth and fun of the first one. In the first one it's nice to watch the lead come around and embrace the other nuns and help them and in the end the nuns help her.

Whoopi was just fine in both SISTER ACT and its sequel. So what that the first doesn't (for some people) stand the test of time and that not all people of subsequent generations are familiar with it? That is the case for the vast majority of all films ever made and always will be. Evidently, it is remembered (and fondly, by some people) - hence, the EW article and this thread at its anniversary. Both movies were fine for what they were at the time.

I knew Skye Bassett, who was one of the kids in it. She died young.

Whoopi says Disney is not interested in doing a Sister Act 3. It's interesting cause Whoopi didn't like doing the first Sister Act, did the second one for the money and for years said she wouldn't do a 3rd. It was only after her acting career fizzled out that she started saying she'd do another Sister Act. I can see why, I think Sister Act 3 would be successful and perhaps relaunch her acting career.