Have you seen Wes (Scream) Craven's latest Halloween movie? It's way cool. Meryl Streep plays a Harlem music teacher who gets her funding cut. So she exacts horrible revenge on the New York school board, using bungee sticks made from shattered violins.

I'm joking, of course. The only real ghastly thing about Music Of The Heart is its title.

Craven's film is a subdued but heartfelt homage to real-life music teacher Roberta Guaspari (Streep), a woman who emerged from a devastating divorce to turn her life around in an unexpected direction.

While recovering from her hubby's infidelity, Roberta meets an old high school chum, journalist Brian Turner (Aidan Quinn). He steers her towards an East Harlem elementary school principal (Angela Bassett) who's in need of a decent music teacher. Bringing her own personal collection of 50 violins to the school, she manages to get through to the oft-unruly inner-city kids, while simultaneously caring for her two sons and nurturing her budding relationship with Brian.

It's not easy. Though inclined to bluntness ("You're parents are going to throw up when they hear you!"), Roberta has to learn finesse in a neighbourhood where excuses for tardiness include: "My grandma was killed by muggers yesterday." She must also adjust to prickly political sensitivities, as when one black mother complains about her teaching the works of "dead white men."

After 10 years, her program is a huge success. But Roberta still has only "substitute" status, and is thus vulnerable when the thick-skulled school board deems music an expendable program and cuts her funding.

Roberta doesn't use bungee sticks to fight back. She uses connections.

The acting challenge for Streep is more daunting than it looks. She has to show us Roberta's character arc -- from weepy wronged woman to take-charge powerhouse -- while being grounded in the same personality.

She does this admirably, of course. In fact, it is Craven, apparently enjoying his genre switchover too much, who succumbs to sentimentality in the end. It's especially apparent not just in the title (originally 50 Violins) but in the accompanying music score, which dares to layer shmaltzy romance movie music over Beethoven.

In a movie about a violin teacher, Craven should have known when not to cue the strings.


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