3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, drug use, violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang
Mara Brock Akil’s screenplay for
this updated remake of Sparkle is laden with moments — plot developments,
dialogue exchanges — that cut so close to Whitney Houston’s grim, off-camera misfortunes,
that one cannot help wincing.
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| Thanks in no small part to her flashier dresses, Sister (Carmen Ejogo, center) gets all the attention when she and siblings Dolores (Tika Sumpter, left) and Sparkle (Jordin Sparks) perform as a Motown "girl group." Unfortunately, Sister's reckless behavior is destined to change this dynamic. |
Indeed, it sometimes feels as if
one is in a constant state of wince.
Many of these moments don’t even
concern Houston’s character. But the mere knowledge that Houston embraced this
project — her final film, and her first big-screen role since 1996’s The
Preacher’s Wife — adds a layer of pathos that I’m sure director Salim Akil
(the scripter’s husband) exploited quite deliberately.
The knowledge that Houston died
during post-production of what was intended as a comeback role — without ever
having seen the finished result — adds an additional layer of heartbreak that
tragically unbalances this film.
Which is a shame, because —
unlike many remakes — this new version of Sparkle has much to recommend it,
starting with the radiant title performance by Jordin Sparks. Mara Brock Akil’s
script moves the story down different paths than those taken by the 1976
original — still recognized as a very important entry in African-American
cinema — and not merely because these events have been bumped forward roughly a
decade.
Some shrewd socio-political
content occasionally surfaces from the overly familiar “Golly, but I’d love to
be a star” underdog saga.
But 19-year-old Sparkle (Sparks)
isn’t really an underdog; she’s more of a plain-Jane house mouse. That is, at
least, how she sees herself when standing alongside her older sisters: the
confident and accomplished Dolores (Tika Sumpter), who yearns to become a
doctor; and rebellious wild child Tammy, better known as Sister (Carmen Ejogo),
back in the family home after a decadent big-city sojourn from which — we
gather — she was lucky to escape.
The setting is Detroit in the
late 1960s, and all that era involves: the civil rights movement, renegade
fashions and hairstyles, and — most crucially, to this tale — the enormously
popular music of Motown. Sparkle and her sisters live comfortably in a
middle-class home held together by their mother, Emma (Houston), a single
parent who once had her own ill-fated fling with the music scene, and has
endured by becoming a conservative church-goer.
(We almost can imagine that Emma
might have been one of the cast-offs from the original Sparkle, which was set
in 1950s Harlem and sorta-kinda echoed the rise of Diana Ross and the Supremes.)
