"Sparkle" is like a box of July Fourth sparklers. It sizzles briefly whenever people open their mouths to sing, flames out, then flashes to life again when someone lights another musical sparkler.
In between, when people open their mouths to talk, the characters mostly are like burned-out sparklers - stiff, inert, disposable metal sticks.
Not really the way we'd like to remember Whitney Houston or welcome a gifted singer such as Jordin Sparks to the big screen. But the main attraction of "Sparkle" is the glitter and glamour, and in that it delivers, compensating somewhat for the bad melodrama and bad acting in a bad story of a Supremes-style sister act on the late 1960s Motown scene.
A remake of the 1976 movie, "Sparkle" was a passion project for Houston, also an executive producer on the production. Her death on the eve of the Grammys in February turned the movie into a memorial of sorts, but her performance as a disapproving mom is slight, while the one solo number she sings is blah, a sad reminder of another glorious voice gone gruff with time and hard living.
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In the title role, "American Idol" winner Sparks has an innocence and earnestness, wide eyes filled with hope and decency, a blazing smile, that beautiful singing voice. And then she has to go and talk, in flat, breathless tones, infusing Sparkle with all the conviction of a drama-club diva with her first lead in a school play.
So you have a movie called "Sparkle," about an aspiring singer and songwriter named Sparkle, who is background noise to her own story.
Sparkle's the youngest of three sisters raised by stern, religious Detroit businesswoman Emma (Houston), who had a taste of musical success in her youth and got burned badly.
Eldest sibling Tammy (Carmen Ejogo), who goes by the name Sister, is the wild child - desperate to break out of the confines of Emma's world. With a magnificent voice and spicy stage presence, Sister's a born star as she takes the lead in a threesome backed by Sparkle and middle sibling Dolores (Tika Sumpter).
Ejogo steals the show, getting the best songs to sing and the best lines to shout as the melodrama turns shrill. Sumpter manages sass and strength as the smart, sensible sister, leaving Sparks playing third fiddle in her own movie.
Houston sort of speed-mumbles her way through much of her dialogue, and though we're told she's a loving parent, she plays Emma mostly as a mean, bitter, suspicious mom.
