Music of the Heart (1999)

As Roberta Guaspari, who starts a violin-instruction program at an East Harlem grade school, Meryl Streep labors to make herself shrill and coarse as strenuously as she used to perfect her accents. You can see what she's going for — the inner-city teacher as inspirational tough-love drill sergeant — yet Streep forgets to give Roberta a softer, art-loving side. The film's one true angle on Roberta is a distressingly colonial one: She comes into Harlem and saves all these aimless rainbow coalition kids by teaching them the glories of classical music. C-