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If you’ve ever read any of my reviews, you know firsthand that if there’s one thing that I hate about mainstream Hollywood movies, it’s a cliche. Nothing zaps the life out of viewing a new movie like the realization that you’ve seen and heard and witnessed the onscreen proceedings before. There needs to be some tension, some sense of anticipation, some discernible attempt at creativity on the part of the filmmakers and actors involved. That, after all, is the whole point of a creative medium like cinema.
Well, there is a caveat, and a disclaimer: it turns out I can enjoy a movie riddled with cliches and obvious outcomes, stock characters, and ‘eh’ musical performances if the centerpiece of the movie happens to be one of the Best Voices in the World – EVER. I know I’ve cracked many a Whitney Houston joke and laughed right along as Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, and Kathy Griffin have made hay of her much touted drug addiction which ultimately claimed her life, but one thing remains clear after watching Sparkle: Whitney Houston was a star, a true, blue, gleaming-in-the-sky-above and unnaturally talented super human who was, in the end, as frail a mortal as any of us. The fact that she could produce a movie like Sparkle and co-star in it as she fought her way back to public respectability is one thing; you may admire her for it, you may not; but if the hairs on your arm don’t stand up every time she sings in this movie, then I suggest you check your pulse. She gave me goosebumps just by parting her lips.
Houston is in her element when she sings in Sparkle. Her vocal performances in the movie are so transcendent, so utterly pitch perfect (even with the obvious change in the quality of her voice), that it overpowers every other element of the movie, especially the ho-hum plot about a young girl named Sparkle (Jordin Sparks) who loves music but doesn’t believe she has the talents beauty, or ability to hold a stage required of a singer. Sparkle’s mother is named Emma (Houston) who has two other daughters named Dee (Tika Sumpter) and Sister (the holy-crap-is-she-gorgeous Carmen Ejogo). Both the other girls know how to sing and enchant an audience. In a way, they’re sort of the benign step-sisters to Sparkle’s obvious Cinderella. Emma is no witchy step-mother, she’s more of a fairy godmother, excepts he doesn’t sing bibbidi bobbidi boo. She sings “His Eye is on the Sparrow”, a lyrical church hymn that brings back the Whitney of yore.
I have never seen the original 1976 movie of which this a remake, so I can’t offer any comparisons. I have, however, seen the recent Dreamgirls which featured a starmaking turn by Jennifer Hudson and earned Eddie Murphy and Oscar nod. Sparkle seems to suffer from a heavy Dreamgirls hangover, but then any movie about a rage-to-riches musical career transformation is bound to feel the same. The performances are stellar, no doubt (Jordin Sparks can definitely act), but in the end it is the face, the mouth, and the voice of Whitney Houston that persists in the memory. Sparkle will not go down as a “great” movie, but it is a fitting tribute and showcase for arguable The Last of the Great Voices.
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