Sunshine Women’s Choir review – weepie prison musical is huge Taiwan hit but drowns in own gloop

This schmaltzy film about a choir of inmates might make you cry – but in exasperation, frustration and disbelief rather than heartfelt emotion Everyone involved with this feelgood/feelbad prison musical/weepie, and Taiwan’s biggest local box office hit ever, should be put on immediate cinematic probation and banned from film-making until it’s clear they are no longer a danger to the public. Starting out as merely heavy schmaltz, it resorts to increasingly manipulative tactics to wring out eve...

By Phil Hoad