If you give your child a stripper name, I think you kinda have to be happy if she chooses any other career.
Jordin Sparks is Sparkle, the writer among three talented home-jailed singing sisters. Tell me, if Britney Spears is the lead, will her character be named “Spearkle?” How about Katy Perry … “Periwinkle?” Boy, er girl, there’s no end of lame jokes along these lines. The forbidding mother whose cautionary tale of woe leads to Dickensian, er BobbyBrownsian restrictions 
on girl freedom? Whitney Houston. Yeah.
Well, rest her soul, Whitney is a pretty good rep for cautionary tales.
There are a ton of odd castings in Sparkle. Sure, one gets the fact that singer Jordin Sparks is our heroine. Adding to Whitney, there’s Derek Luke as the group manager. Funny how this role in rock films is always played by Timothy Spall or Paul Giamatti. Then Curtis Armstrong (a.k.a. “Booger”) as the make-or-break record producer, and my personal favorite Mike Epps as Satin [read: Satan]. Blithely amiable comedian Mike Epps as the heavy … um, it worked when we put Eddie Murphy in this role, right? Did you just run out of black actors or what?
Sparkle is essentially a movie about the showbiz rise of the title character from sheltered mama’s girl to star. Why she doesn’t sing as well as Sister (Carmen Ejogo) is never explained, but we do know she’s the talent. She is not, however, talented enough to circumvent her first group name – I’m not making this up – Sister and her Sisters.
Let me see if I can sum this up fast – every single thing that doesn’t involve a woman singing in Sparkle is an absolute waste of film. Sorry, Derek, but yeah, you too. I’m pretty sure the movie understood this as no fewer than two subplots were abandoned and stompled along the way and we lose the villain half-way through. Next time, ladies, how about just a concert film?
Sistahs gotta sing
In Motown it’s the thing
Whitney needs to control ’em
Houston, we have a problem.
Rated PG-13, 116 Minutes
D: Salim Akil
W: Mara Brock Akil, Howard Rosenman
Genre: Ethnic Glee
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: “When are they gonna make another Dreamgirls?”
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Tin ears
