Thanks to her much-publicised rows with her family, her diva-style antics during her US tour, and her legal battles with her ex-manager, Charlotte Church has hardly been out of the papers recently. So it is hard to take her seriously as a wholesome teenager in this sentimental comedy from writer-director Craig Ferguson.
Ferguson also appears as Paul Kerr, an 80s rock god who now spends his time getting plastered and riding his Harley through first-floor windows. Sent for psychiatric help, he is stunned to discover he has an illegitimate daughter, the result of a weekend fling 15 years earlier.
Not only that, but Olivia (Church) is a prodigiously gifted singer with the voice of an angel. Realising she's a chip off the old block, Paul decides to nurture Olivia's talent - unbeknownst to her mother (Jemma Redgrave), a reformed groupie determined to keep her daughter on the straight-and-narrow.
So far, so "Little Voice". But, where Jane Horrocks is an actress who can also sing, poor Miss Church is a singer who just can't act. The Welsh soprano is further undermined by the bewildering decision to have her warble songs unsuited to her operatic register - the title number, for example, or "Summertime" from Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess".
Perhaps to compensate for the gaping hole where his leading lady should be, Ferguson elicits amusingly ribald turns from Joss Ackland's ageing rocker and Ralph Brown as Paul's Aussie pal. Sadly, the result remains an ill-advised vanity project that will do little to salvage its star's sullied reputation.
"I'll Be There" is released in UK cinemas on Friday 20th June 2003.
I'll Be There (2003)
