Greetings,
I bet you thought you were safe this week. No, we are going to go there. Back in time, to one of the worst movies of ALL time. But it's a music movie, so it qualifies to be reviewed by me. Take my hand. We are going to talk about Glitter.
I know that it's practically cliche to talk about how bad this movie is, and every reviewer has had the pleasure of bashing the daylights out of this thing. But I didn't have this blog way back then, so please indulge me on this.
For those of you who may not know, Glitter is a 2001 film (?) starring Mariah Carey. This was her first attempt at acting, aside from a very small part in a movie called The Bachelor. And up until this point, she had never been anything but successful. I am speaking, of course, professionally. When it came to her personal life, she didn't exactly succeed at marriage, but that is a whole other issue. Needless to say, this movie was not a success at all. I'm sure it didn't help that Mariah was also having some kind of breakdown at the same time. I sympathize with her on that, but I really don't know what she was thinking with this movie. Hang on, is it even legally a movie if there is no legitimate plot involved? Technically, I say no. It's what I call a PBFWTTAMA. Translation: People Being Filmed While They Talk And Move Around. Yes, I know. I am a genius. But, to make things easier for all of us, I'll just call it a movie. Let us begin. Oh, mercy.
Okay, if I was forced to extract some kind of plot from this movie, I guess I could say that it is the story of a little girl with a troubled home life who becomes a big star. Yes, it is a little unoriginal, but it could have been a good foundation. You start with that, then you add in a couple of conflicts that can mature and be resolved. A COUPLE of conflicts, not a thousand. See, that was one of the major problems here. There were a ton of things getting thrown at the main character. Oh, whose name, by the way, is Billie. I can't believe I didn't even think to mention that. As I was saying, there were a lot of problems thrown at Billie, but like 99.9% of them were resolved in about two minutes. So none of these so-called issues got a chance to mature into actual problems where the resolution would be an actual payoff.
And let's talk of the overall generic quality of everything in this movie. We had generic best friends, a generic love interest, a generic competitor for the love interest. We are not given anything to make us care about any of these characters. We certainly were not given any actors who could properly portray the characters and make them in any way dynamic. Well, we do get a pre-legitimized Terrence Howard, but with him, I think was just a case of a good actor trying to make the best of some really bad material. Speaking of which, what the heck with Dorian Harewood showing up in this thing? He was in Full Metal Jacket, for crying out loud. I weep, say a prayer and recall when I saw Hugh Laurie in Spice World. Now you know why House was always in a mood.
Now this post would be a mile long if I tried to get into all those plot threads that never led to anything. So I think I will choose to stop with talk of the movie on that level and get on to the music. This will be slightly less painful. Slightly.
The soundtrack is really nothing about which to brag. I think what made this so unsuccessful can be attributed to two things. First, being tied to this movie doesn't help. Second, when you compare it to all of Mariah's previous music, there is no comparison. Maybe if this album had been released by some new unknown artist it would have been given some props, but it did not live up to the quality we had come to expect from Mariah Carey. Now she did have a very minor hit from this called "Loverboy" and to be honest, I don't hate the song "Never Too Far", which reminded me of one of her classic ballads. Still, it wasn't enough to give this album a pass.
So am I recommending this? Not really. But I will choose to end on a high note, so to speak. As we all know, in 2005, Mariah made a huge musical comeback with The Emancipation of Mimi, but let us not forget about the strides she has made as an actress. Many people, myself included, were quite impressed by her performance in the movie Precious. But it was there that she did the right thing. She was not carrying the entire film, and she was not playing herself but a woman who was a not all glammed up, regular person. Therefore, Mariah proved that she does, indeed, have some acting chops. It's just all about presentation.
So, yes, we will always have Glitter whether we like it or not. We can be critical of dear Mariah, which I think I was, but let's remember that we all make mistakes in life. Some of us are just blessed enough to not have to make them in front of the whole world.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
