`MUSIC OF THE HEART' PLAYS WELL.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

An inspiring crowd-pleaser, ``Music of the Heart'' is based on such a remarkable true story that it would take a complete hack to mess it up. Fortunately, director Wes Craven makes good on his leap from horror to the heartwarming, delivering a solid, if predictable movie that will likely have audiences on their feet, a la ``Mr. Holland's Opus.''

The film's subject, violin teacher Roberta Guaspari, was featured in the 1996 Oscar-nominated documentary, ``Small Wonders.'' This time she is played by the formidable Meryl Streep, which translates into a performance that's as close to real life as any actor will come. Streep practiced violin four to six hours a day and wound up playing the demanding instrument quite convincingly throughout the movie. Forget all her film accents - this is Streep's most impressive technical accomplishment.

Guaspari was a military man's wife, moving with her Navy husband from base to base. The film opens with the news that her husband is leaving her and a grief-stricken Guaspari asking, ``What am I going to do?'' Answers her practical mother (Cloris Leachman): ``Get a job, any job.''

The job Guaspari winds up taking is in East Harlem, where she moves with her two young boys. She will be a (temporary) violin teacher at an elementary school. She has little teaching experience aside from schooling her own children, but she does possess one important asset - violins, 50 of them, in fact. Out of such small origins, a thriving institution is built.

``Music of the Heart'' shows the genius behind Guaspari's method. Doubters scoff that inner-city kids don't have the discipline to learn the violin, but Guaspari believes that kids want to succeed and will respond if challenged. She demands attention, requiring her students to do things her way. She's tough, too - a class blackboard reads ``Do you LIKE the sound you're making?'' - but the kids listen and learn, delighted that someone believes in their capacity to master a new talent.

The film also delves into Guaspari's home life with her children and love life with various suitors, including a wandering journalist played by Aidan Quinn. Angela Bassett is persuasive as the school's beleaguered principal, and singer Gloria Estefan has a small role as a teacher sympathetic to Guaspari's cause.

Also on hand in a climactic scene at Carnegie Hall: famed violinists Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern, as well as some of Guaspari's actual students, being led in Bach's Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins by, yes, Streep herself.

The movie has enough melodrama for three films, but Craven keeps the manipulation to a minimum, aside from a couple of shots of a cute puppy dog. His greatest resource is Streep, who invests a believable humanity into a character that, in lesser hands, would have been rendered some sort of saint. It's hard to believe Madonna was slated to play Guaspari. That, indeed, would have been a scream, and not the kind that Craven appreciates.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Music of the Heart'' (PG; brief mild language and sensuality).

The stars: Meryl Streep, Aidan Quinn, Gloria Estefan, Angela Bassett, Cloris Leachman.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Wes Craven. Screenplay by Pamela Gray. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: Two hours, three minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars.