disgusting, overrated, pointless

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This movie is basically a family movie. Although children under the age of ten probably would not appreciate it. The Singing Nun will leave you with positive messages and upbeat feelings. Wholesome Debbie Reynolds is perfect for a nun. Other great actors such as Greer Garson, Ricardo Montalban, Agnes Moorehead, and Katharine Ross further lead to the enjoyment of the film. It is hard to picture Ricardo Montalban as a priest. He is totally handsome and debonair in whatever he does. However, it is Debbie Reynolds who is the star. The Singing Nun has picturesque scenes and you feel warm and fuzzy throughout the film. The music is very good as well. It's a film that the whole family can watch together. Sit back, relax and enjoy. I give it four thumbs up.

Debbie Reynolds had one more chance after her triumph as Molly Brown to sing in the movies, and even if the critics carped that this was simply a rip-off of "The Sound of Music" craze, she came off unscathed. Reynolds is Sister Anne, a Belgian nun who brings music into her new convent and turns it upside down. Like Sweet Apple Ohio in "Bye Bye Birdie", she gets "Mr. Showbiz" (Ed Sullivan) into the act, but unlike other sudden new stars cast into the limelight, she doesn't get into any "nasty habits". Sister Anne simply wants to praise God through her music, and thanks to the kindly Father Clementi (Ricardo Montalban), her Mother Superior (an overly chatty Greer Garson) agrees. A grouchy Agnes Moorehead and a sweet Juanita Moore are the other nuns in the order, and with Reynolds' charm working her over, it is no time at all before Moorehead actually cracks a smile. Like Angela Lansbury sings in "Dear World", it only takes one person to play a drum (in Sister Anne's case, it is her guitar, "Sister Adele") to get everybody marching.Sister Anne was famous for the hit song "Dominque", the only time in music history where a nun had music on the charts. The soundtrack is filled out with a few other small gems, which include the touching "Beyond the Stars" and the lively "It's a Miracle!". A group number, "Brother John", features all of the nuns, and is another highlight. With this music, you won't need "The Sound of Music's" Eleanor Parker promising that next time she will bring in her harmonica.There are some serious plot points in this sentimental tale, most sweetly Sister Anne's love for the young Dominic (Ricky Cordell), a feisty but lovable child she looks after when discovering the truth about his situation. When a young woman tells Reynolds of her intentions to have an abortion, Reynolds acts appropriately to the convictions of a Catholic nun, not judgmental, even if it appears she is being so. And when she hears "Dominique" being played to a (rather bad) rock beat, Sister Anne must find a new venue to continue to do her work for God.Reynolds is excellent, while Moorehead, Moore and Garson seem to be playing "types" of nuns than "characters". It is nice to see Moorehead switch from grouchy to kindly, but I found Garson's overly wise mother superior a bit pretentious, unlike Peggy Woods' serene Reverand Mother in "The Sound of Music". Of "Nun" films (there are many!), Reynolds' Sister Anne may not ever be compared to Deborah Kerr's ("Black Narcissus", "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison") or Audrey Hepburn's ("The Nun's Story"), but she ain't no Sister Mary Clarence (Whoopie Goldberg, "Sister Act"), either. Too bad Mary Wickes wasn't available here to be the bus driver! The real life Sister Anne did not end up as lucky, having a rather tragic ending that is a movie of itself.

I agree that Debbie sings some of the best musical numbers of her career, and between the songs in "Bundle of Joy" and "The Singing Nun" I'll take "The Singing Nun".Just as the film "Jeannie Eagels" is a fantasy very loosely based on the life of ill-fated actress Jeannie Eagels and as such basically only got one or two facts straight, so does "The Singing Nun" stretch reality and we wretch. Stretch and Wretch.On the other hand, if we accept these films as the fiction they are, then they become good "moral" stories. And so "The Singing Nut" Debbie Reynolds sings and dimples her way through a film that resembles reality in only the fact that a nun named "Sister Smile" actually put out an album of her songs and it caused a big flurry of worry for the Sister.Maybe some of the songs in the film were actually written by Jeanne-Paul Marie Deckers but the words for "Dominique" seem to not be the same words shown in the English translation of the song on my copy of the original album. There is a song called "Sister Adele" about her Spanish guitar which is also not the same song as the one played in the film, and another funny item is the guitar Debbie Reynolds wields happens to be a Nylon Stringed Classical guitar- A Spanish Guitar does not have a round hole, a Spanish Guitar happens to have F-Holes and steel strings.Even though this film is fiction and fantasy and ideology, I do not cringe when I see it like I do "The Sound of Music" or "My Fair Lady"- where I do not know why they bothered to write dialogue when they could have just sung those movies all the way through with no dialogue whatsoever. although the music and song in those films is overwhelming, the fact that they are nonstop though the films is also overwhelming and can only be enjoyed in very small doses. On the other hand, "The flying, er, Singing Nun" has some good acting by Anges Moorehead who is my favourite Red Headed Actress and Bey**ch, oh I just loved Agnes, she could do anything including all kinds of ethnic parts, Ricardo Montal-Khan dons a priestly habit rather than a pair of swim trunks or 23rd Century Barbarian Garb, and Katherine Ross is very good: Almost to the point that she does not resemble a girl who is heading toward prostitution, she is too squeaky-clean. Someone made a comment that all this film was missing was Bing Crosby and I agree, where was he when this was made? The main reason I like this film is because I loved the song "Dominique" as a small child - Everyone loved that song, and I mean it was everywhere when it came out. This film- Although getting the life of Soeur Sourire totally wrong, does NOT get wrong the feeling o the early 60's which I happen to remember because "I was there". I do not mean in Belgium, but in 1963, and although I grew up in southern California and not Belgium, the outdoor scenes in this film make me remember things I have forgotten for decades.One thing the film is accurate about: That a nun could write a song, record it, and it becomes not just a local hit that was apparently originally intended to be sold only locally to help the Convent, but by a set of extremely lucky circumstances this song would also become an International hit, a worldwide hit and a song of comfort after the assassination of JFK. The film does not exaggerate the impact the song had on the world, as a matter of fact, it waters that impact down a bit.Sister Anne had a different fate other than the one shown at the end of the film, but that does not matter to me: This film is fantasy, not reality: Because I want to think it could have been good like that for the real Singing Nun, but life is sometimes not as simple as shown in movies.I am looking at the artwork on and in the Album Cover and there is even a set of lithographed prints... And ultimately that art speaks about a faith that is simple, and that is the only thing that matters really, and I wish that could have been brought out in this film- But it is not, it is not even mentioned at all, and he artwork was just as important as the music.

If the real Jeanne Deckers had never made that recording in 1963 she probably would have been a much happier person, probably still in blessed obscurity in a convent somewhere on the globe. Only probably though because she was in conflict with the church she gave her life to.At the time the film The Singing Nun came out I well remember the critical roasting it got. Like Going My Way this is how the Roman Catholic Church likes to see itself portrayed. This film was such a ode to the faith, I'm wondering how the most famous Catholic lay person in the world, Bing Crosby, didn't get involved in it.Young Sister Anna, in real life known as Sister Sourire enters a convent in Belgium presided over by Mother Prioress Greer Garson and is part of the parish where Father Ricardo Montalban presides. The young nun with her guitar is played by Debbie Reynolds and her combination of music and faith wins over just about everyone around her.Including young recording executive Chad Everett who has her cut and album that becomes a worldwide phenomenon. I still remember her record of Dominique played right around the same time the Fab Four from Liverpool were bursting on the American consciousness. But as soon as she arrived, The Singing Nun went back into the convent, in the film she and fellow sister Juanita Moore go off to Africa as missionaries. By the way Moore has the best performance in the film.Debbie Reynolds performs the songs of The Singing Nun well and the musical numbers are well staged. Would that The Singing Nun did have a happily ever after life after fame.She didn't in fact. During the film Reynolds of course takes a strong anti-abortion position as per the Church teachings. In real life she did leave the convent and became an activist for birth control. She also had tax problems from our government, hardly the last celebrity to deal with that. She and a woman who had been her life companion for 10 years committed a double suicide together in 1985. She seems to have gone against her faith in any number of ways.Read the Wikipedia article on The Singing Nun, it will be quite an eye opener. It's a story that definitely needs telling and maybe one day someone will tell it.