Ann Hornaday reviews 'Sparkle' 
 
 By Ann Hornaday 
 
 Friday, August 17, 2012 
 
 A sudsy, eye-catching bauble that should have been a pop-infused piece of escapism but instead turned into an unwitting elegy, “Sparkle” arrives freighted with more than its share of expectations. A re-make of the beloved 1976 musical starring Irene Cara (and, not incidentally, featuring the music of Curtis Mayfield), the updated version will forever be known the final screen appearance of Whitney Houston, who died in February during post-production. 
 
 While “Sparkle” doesn’t give the audience a lasting memory of Houston’s voice at its most soaring, it does manage to provide a lingering sense of loss, mixed with celebration and grim irony. Houston plays the disapproving mother of a daughter who longs to make it big as a singer; in a role that plays like a cautionary mirror version of Houston’s own fatal battles, she warns against the depredations of an entertainment industry that indulges and exploits young talent just as intently as it nurtures it. 
 
 Happily, though, Houston’s presence in “Sparkle” isn’t maudlin or discomfiting. She even has some wonderfully amusing scenes as Emma, the tight-lipped, kerchiefed martinet whose Saturday-night refrain to her girls is always the same: “Curl your hair. Go to bed. Church tomorrow.” 
 
 Whether they listen is another story. As “Sparkle” opens, in Detroit in 1968, Sister (Carmen Ejogo) and her little sister Sparkle (Jordin Sparks) have snuck out to a nightclub where Sparkle has convinced her sister to sing one of the songs she’s written. (And yes, that’s Cee Lo Green in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him early cameo.) 
 
 In the course of Sister’s vamping, bombshell debut, she and Sparkle attract the attention of a newbie manager named Stix (Derek Luke), who eventually will persuade them to try for the big time; even Sister and Sparkle’s level-headed sister Dee (Tika Sumpter) will agree to don all manner of sequins, wigs and eyelashes-out-to-here in an effort to help Sparkle achieve her dreams. One of the film’s most satisfying moments is when Dee -- who has taken sharp note of the changes sweeping black culture in that era -- abandons her processed bob for a chic, close-cropped natural cut. 
 
 Fans familiar with the original -- or any number of backstage showbiz morality tales -- know that plenty of hardship must ensue before inevitable, glitzy triumph. Sister will take up with a no-count comedian named Satin (played with appropriately silky, sinister aplomb by Mike Epps), and Emma -- a former singer herself -- will do all she can to keep her kids from making the same mistakes she did. 
 
 But in between the obstacles, “Sparkle” trafficks in the same gorgeous Motown style -- sonic and visual -- that made the original film, and “Dreamgirls” after it, such delectable fun. The pulp melodrama may be slathered on like so much frosted pink lip gloss, but director Salim Akil (“Jumping the Broom”) knows just when to cut it with a dollop of warmth or down-home humor. (The scene in which Sister brings Satin home for Sunday dinner rings with particular flinty honesty about tensions within the African American community.) 
 
 The filmmakers have kept Mayfield’s stand-out songs from the original, including “Jump,” “Hooked On Your Love” and “Something He Can Feel,” performed by Ejogo with a sinuous sulk. The tunes contributed by R. Kelly don’t quite hold up, in part because their arrangements feel so jarringly of-this-moment. But Sparks does a terrific job with her big number, a barn burner called “One Wing” on which she holds her own before three backup singers, an orchestra and an enormous gospel choir. 
 
 Even when Mara Brock Akil’s script descends into lurid, hackneyed schematics, the performances in “Sparkle” possess verve and seriousness, especially those by Luke (a consistently appealing screen presence) and the attractive main actresses, who judiciously balance earthy focus and divalike fabulosity. For her part, Houston delivers a steady, if muted, rendition of the classic hymn “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” which finds her in dramatically diminished voice but powerful emotional form. 
 
 “Sparkle” may have begun as nothing more than a tuneful, diverting nostalgia trip, but it turns out to be a surprisingly poignant swan song. 
 
 Contains mature thematic content involving domestic abuse and drug abuse, some violence, profanity and smoking. ||||| Whitney Houston deserved better than to go out onscreen with this botch job remake of a 1976 soap opera that never deserved another thought. Hell, Dreamgirls did a better job of fictionalizing the story of the Supremes into a viable musical. The new Sparkle is a formula job from scene one to dead end. Set in Detroit in the late 1960s with Motown in flower, Sparkle casts Houston as the domineering mother of three daughters who form a girl group behind mama's back. Sister (Carmen Ejogo) is the troubled bombshell who fronts the group, called – ready for it? – Sister and Her Sisters. Dee (Tika Sumpter) doesn't mind singing backup because she has her eye on being a doctor. It's Sparkle (Jordin Sparks), a churchy mama's girl, who does mind. Sparkle writes all the songs and yearns to be a STAR!. Oh, brother. Director Salim Akil hits every cliché in the script and adds visual triteness of his own. Sparks, the Season Six American Idol winner, has a lovely smile and no discernible range as an actress. So her final transformation falls flat. Still, there's one scene that almost redeems this mess of a movie. It's Houston in church singing "His Eye Is On the Sparrow." She gives it everything she has. And what a glory abides in her voice. In a movie that feels fake to its core, Houston is the genuine article. She will be much missed. ||||| 1.5 out of 4 stars Title Sparkle Written by Mara Brock Akil and Howard Rosenman Directed by Salim Akil Starring Jordin Sparks, Carmen Ejogo, Whitney Houston Classification PG Country USA Language English 
 
 Sparkle is a story about the transformative power of music, the dark side of fame and a young church choirgirl with a dream… can you see how it might be hard to talk about the movie outside of the context of Whitney Houston's death? Let's try, though. Because despite the seeming need to draw Michael Jackson-ian comparisons, Sparkle was never going to be Houston's "This Is It" Tour – an epic comeback with which to relaunch her career. Instead, the movie is a showcase vehicle for a new generation of young actress-hyphen-singers, led, at least titularly speaking, by American Idol champ Jordin Sparks. 
 
 Anyone who has seen Dream Girls, What's Love Got To Do With It? or even The Doors will find themselves in familiar (if inferior) territory here, complete with all the giddy hallmarks of the late '60s music-group-on-the-rise sub-genre – musical montages with loads of hair and outfit changes, a front wo/man who's gotten too big for their go-go boots, and that scene where the big shot record producer struts into the dressing room to tell the young hopefuls that they've got what it takes. 
 
 Sparkle's more specific narrative follows the Andrews sisters of Detroit. There is Sister (the sexy one, played by Carmen Ejogo), Dolores (the smart one, played by Tika Sumpter) and Sparkle (the talented, virginal songwriter with a dream, played by first time actor Sparks). 
 
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 In the Andrews household a girl either sticks to her Bible-studies or winds up poor, pregnant and alone, as was the fate of the family matriarch (Houston as Emma). In a scene that I'm sort of surprised made it into the final cut (Houston died while Sparkle was in post-production), Sister reminisces a childhood where she would often find her mother passed out in a heap of her own vomit. Whitney, or rather Emma, retorts that that happened "only once." 
 
 Of course the girls defy Mama's warnings and soon find themselves opening on the same circuit as Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye. All of their dreams are coming true until Sister strikes up a volatile love affair with a celebrity (Mike Epps as sleazy standup comedian Satin Struthers is standout if uncomfortably reminiscent of Laurence Fishburne's Oscar-nominated turn as Ike Turner in the aforementioned Tina Turner bio-pic). 
 
 The irony of Sparks's performance (that she is solid enough, but fails to sparkle in any way) will likely turn her career, at least as far as movie making goes, into another post-Idol cautionary tale. Egojo – who will almost certainly be labelled Beyoncé Lite, but is in fact more dynamic, sexy and, dare we say, Bootylicious than the real thing – plays hardened vulnerability to perfection, so much so that you wonder (given her 38 years) where Hollywood has been hiding her. 
 
 This movie is not Houston's legacy – anyone who wants to hear that can download her double disc Greatest Hits collection or go check out the just-launched tribute exhibition at the Grammy museum in L.A. Houston's performance in Sparkle – essentially a series of camera-pandering "diva expressions" and a horrible red weave – sees her bloated and sweaty, presumably fighting the demons that would soon derail her. Was she ever a great actress? No. I can recite most of The Bodyguard from memory, and still I can concede that much. 
 
 In the movie's most poignant scene, Emma performs a gospel standard for the congregation: "I sing because I'm happy/I sing because I'm free." For fans, it's a fitting, post-mortal epitaph. A reminder of what made Whitney sparkle. ||||| Depending on your depth of feeling about Whitney Houston, the Motown-era musical “Sparkle” will either feel like a fond (and sometimes cringe-inducing) farewell to an old friend, or a wholly unremarkable entry in the already overcrowded star-is-born genre. 
 
 Houston, who shot the film just a few months before her death in February, does get her moment of glory in a scene so pointed, I find it hard to believe it wasn’t re-edited after she died. Standing at the front of a church, clad in a royal-purple cape and flanked by stained glass and a full choir, the late singer belts out — in a voice substantially huskier than in her “Bodyguard” days — that she’s “singing because I’m happy.” At my screening, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. If you’re still mourning Houston’s death, it’s almost enough of a reason to go. 
 
 But it does little to redeem the rest of this plodding story, which often seems like a flat, straightforward Supremes biopic in its adherence to seemingly pointless scenes and exposition. Director Salim Akil (“Jumping the Broom”), working from a screenplay by his wife, Mara Brock Akil (TV’s “The Game”), gets the retro visuals just right, and some stage performances do, well, sparkle. But they’re too few and far between, surrounded by cardboard dialogue (“I’ll sign them!” shouts Curtis Armstrong, as a Columbia records exec, watching the group backstage) and a now-well-worn “Behind the Music” trajectory. 
 
 PHOTOS: DEAD MOVIE STARS 
 
 The remake of a 1976 film starring a young Irene Cara, it’s the story of three sisters, Sparkle (“American Idol” winner Jordin Sparks), Sister (British actress Carmen Ejogo) and Dolores (Tika Sumpter, a real pistol who should have gotten more screen time). They try to make it as a girl group in the burgeoning Detroit Motown scene of 1968 (updated from the setting of the original, 1950s Harlem). 
 
 Cee Lo Green pops up as a club performer early on, confirming that musically, it’s the era in which he really belongs — and that he rocks a smoking jacket like nobody’s business. 
 
 Houston, the girls’ churchgoing single mother, Emma, “used to be a professional singer” (the first of many times you’ll flinch!) who turned to substance abuse (flinch again!) before finding God, so they’re doing the singing thing on the down-low, sneaking out to perform in smoky clubs once Mom’s gone to bed. 
 
 It’s somewhat hard to believe they pull off these weekly gigs, their star on the rise, without Emma knowing. Or it would be if — I’m sorry, but it’s true! — Houston didn’t look as if she’d just been woken up from a nap nearly every time she’s on camera. No, it’s not hard to believe this person would be a sound sleeper. 
 
 Still, Houston does get a few amusing moments in her supporting role, dancing along with a band on TV before snapping it off and commanding the girls’ Bible club to hit the books, or training a steely eye on her daughter being chatted up by a young man after church. 
 
 Sparkle, the group’s songwriter, is wooed by their young and handsome manager, Stix (the always-earnest Derek Luke), but worries he’s using her to get closer to sister Sister. She, Sister, in turn, has fallen under the spell of Mike Epps as sleazy TV comedian Satin (what is it with the ridiculous S-names in this town?), who traffics in cheap race-riot jokes and dabbles in hard drugs and domestic violence. When Sister announces at the family’s Sunday dinner that she’s going to marry him, things get ugly, and Houston’s character ends up on the defensive: “I passed out a few times, sure, but you’d never see me laying in my own vomit!” (Wince.) 
 
 As the group, Sister and the Sisters, begins to make a name for itself, the film briefly takes off with a series of lively performances; Ejogo is a particularly dynamic and gorgeous singer, and all three young actresses wear the increasingly glam period outfits well. 
 
 But eventually, Sister’s bruises and track marks, courtesy of Satin, start to show through the cover-up, and her downfall takes center stage in a way that feels awfully close to a Lifetime TV movie. It’s always telling when viewers giggle during a scene that’s intended to be shocking and tragic, as they did here. 
 
 Meanwhile, Dee wisely decides to high-tail it to medical school, and Sparkle is left wondering if she should strike out on her own. 
 
 For a movie called “Sparkle,” the absolutely least interesting or central thing about it is Sparkle (and Sparks), although the “Idol” singer does bust out one impressive performance. In any case, I hope not to have to type that name again unless I’m covering a My Little Pony resurgence.
– No one's going to call Sparkle a work of cinematic genius: It's a no-surprises remake about the struggles of a 1960s girl group. But if you're a Whitney Houston fan, it may be meaningful: In the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday applauds the film. It "may have begun as nothing more than a tuneful, diverting nostalgia trip, but it turns out to be a surprisingly poignant swan song," she writes. There's an eerie element to Houston's character, who "warns against the depredations of an entertainment industry that indulges and exploits young talent just as intently as it nurtures it." In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers calls the movie "a formula job from scene one to dead end." Still, there's one Houston song ("His Eye Is on the Sparrow") that "almost redeems" the film. "In a movie that feels fake to its core, Houston is the genuine article." During that scene, "I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the house," notes Sara Stewart in the New York Post. "If you’re still mourning Houston’s death, it’s almost enough of a reason to go." But remember, the movie is more of a "showcase vehicle for a new generation of young actress-hyphen-singers" than a celebration of Whitney. And as for star Jordin Sparks, she "fails to sparkle in any way," writes Courtney Shea in the Globe and Mail.