About The Movie:
Set in the
late '60s, Sparkle tells the story of three sisters from middle-class Detroit who
form a girl group sort of like the Supremes. They're astoundingly talented,
they want to be famous, and at one point they get their shot at a major deal
with Columbia Records. But all sorts of things keep getting in the way, like an
abusive, coke-sniffing celebrity boyfriend — what happens to him will
leave your jaw on the floor — and, more than that, their oppressively uptight
church-lady mother, played with teasing confidence and force by Whitney Houston
in her final screen role.
The movie is a remake of the 1976 ersatz-Supremes Hollywood fable
that starred Irene Cara, and the earlier film's setting — the late '50s and
early '60s — made sense.
What Is Good About The Movie:
Whitney Houston's performance proves that this could have been the first step not merely in a comeback but in a major re-invention. She had the instincts of a superb character actress.
It is
impossible to watch this movie and
not relate its story to the life of Whitney Houston. Whitney is not technically the star of the movie, but her rendition of “His
Eye Is on the Sparrow” cemented her prescence. Though her vocal stamina was considerably diminished, her rendition of that gospel
standard gives “Sparkle” much of its heart.
The three sisters are each cut from a very different cloth. The
quietly ambitious Sparkle, a brilliant songwriter, who proves to
be a lot like Irene Cara — that is, she's pretty in a slightly
pained way and wholesomely sincere to the point of being a bit boring. The
whippersnapper Dolores (Tika Sumpter) mostly stays in the background, except
when she explodes in moments of vengeful high dudgeon. And then there's the
sister known, literally, as Sister, who's the star of the group and is played
by the ravishingly sexy and accomplished British actress Carmen Ejogo. The truth is that whenever Sister is on
screen, we're a little unsure why the movie is named after anyone else.
Among the men hovering around the
trio, by far the most developed character is Sister’s abusive boyfriend and
future husband, Satin (Mike Epps), a boozing, coke-snorting stand-up comic
whose routines are put-downs of black people. As the Black Power movement
gathers force, audiences are beginning to turn on him, and he takes his
frustration and fury out on Sister, who comes to rehearsals with black eyes and
in one scene is beaten with a belt. Satin’s dramatic counterweight is Stix (Derek Luke), Sparkle’s on-again, off-again
boyfriend.
What Is Bad About The Movie:
Jordan Sparks is not much of an
actress. Or at least her character, as conceived, is so innocent that she
doesn’t seem fully aware of the melodramas swirling around her. But @ the end of the movie, during her solo
concert debut with a full gospel choir, to a packed house, she delivers.
The trouble with Sparkle isn't
that it's overwrought (that's what's sometimes fun about it). It's that
everything in the movie is derivative and third-hand: a copy of a copy. Though I can't remember the original I saw as a child this movie felt as if it has been fed through a strainer, with bits and pieces squeezed
out of a dozen other, better movies (What's Love Got to Do With It, Lady
Sings the Blues, and Dreamgirls, to name just a few).
Overall Grade:
B-
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