"A Stunning movie!" - Counago & Spaves

There, that's the blurb out of the way.

Yes, I'm talking about Glitter, the Mariah Carey vehicle, directed by Vondie Curtis Hall. Although, when I say "vehicle," the only type that immediately springs to mind is a hearse.

Stunning in its ineptitude is what I mean. My brother got it right when he said it’s not even bad in a good way. I feel ashamed for even thinking that this was going to be something other than a film for 12-year-old girls with a plot conceived by someone with the mind of a 12-year-old girl. A really mature 10-year-old, say.

People had warned me to stay away from it, I confess, but I’d managed to convince myself that this was going to be a camp classic in spite of itself and that there was a hidden brilliance that no one else had picked up on. How wrong I was. Camp classics demand excruciating sentimentality, and while the plot at face value appears to scream drama queen tragedy, efforts to milk the audience’s empathy are so cack-handed that many times you can't even laugh about it.

Maybe it’s Mariah’s appearance that initiates the ridicule: It isn’t her own fault, I realize, but throughout this film she resembles a chipmunk upon whom some cruel animal-hater has drawn ludicrous Charlie Chaplin eyebrows half-way up her forehead, giving her an expression of permanent surprise, like Punxsutawney Phil woken up a day early. Whatever it is, there’s little about Carey’s character, as child or adult, that renders her sympathetic, not even the cat—that cat!—which appears in an early scene when Carey’s character, Billie, is separated as a child from her mother to be fostered, not to be seen again until a dramatic storming-out scene as adult Billie leaves her boyfriend/producer. An intensely dramatic scene, supposedly, then suddenly the cat appears and you think, “where the fuck has that cat come from? Did she have it cryogenically frozen? Is this a symbolic reappearance, a sign of Billie's returning innocence? Is this a Rosebud moment? Is Vondie Curtis Hall really Orson Welles?

Or none of the above.

I won’t spoil the film for you any more than those who made it already have; suffice to say that the last 10 to 15 minutes of this film are some of the most excruciatingly bad I’ve ever sat through in terms of plot denouement. I did cry at the end, but only with tears of laughter and incredulity at what I’d just seen. DO rent it out, don't buy it for god's sake, and DO sit through the whole thing, otherwise you won’t get the benefit of the ending.

I looked at some of the reviews on Amazon, but the reviewers are clearly taking the piss:

“I was SO impressed with Mariah's performance in Glitter. The script was so enticing my mouth was open in awe, wider than Mariah's clevage. And the music is SO good. Me and my boyfriend were both wet when she sang Never Too Far at the end.”

“Valarie Pettiford gives a nice performance in her brief screen time as the alcoholic mother who finally has to abandon young Billie in favor of the bottle.”

It quickly becomes clear that mommy made the right choice. But that we had that option.

and

“I’m a girl who enjoys having a good cry when watching a sad film, so I’m not sure this will appeal to everyone, but if you like a sad romance story, then this is one film you don't want to miss!”

True. This film will make you cry.