When director Sam O’Steen’s backstage musical, Sparkle, appeared in 1976 it had a certain freshness going for it. Set in the 1950s, the movie borrowed liberally from the real-life story of the Motown superstars the Supremes and other girl groups from that era. Melodramatic and filled with archetypes rather than flesh-and-blood characters, the movie nevertheless was very entertaining thanks to tremendous performances by Lonette McKee as the hotly talented bad girl Sister and Dorian Harewood as her physically abusive boyfriend. There were also memorable tunes penned by R&B wunderkind Curtis Mayfield that the cast—which included Irene Cara as the sweet innocent of the title—belted.
But in the three decades since, the once-fresh source material has become, thanks to the Broadway blockbuster Dreamgirls and its more recent musical movie incarnation, all too familiar. So the decision to remake the film with just about the same approach (the only real change is that the time period moves up 10 years in the remake to 1968 and changes the locale from Harlem to Detroit) is a bit of a head-scratcher. (It certainly wasn’t a money decision because the original didn’t do much at the box office.) But whoever instigated director Salim Akil’s remake is to be commended if for no other reason than that it provides a breakout role for Carmen Ejogo as the talented but trouble-plagued Sister and a bittersweet coda for the late superstar Whitney Houston.
As in the first round, the shy but determined Sparkle—who writes the songs and holds back her own singing ability in deference to her wildly talented older sister—is the sweetly innocent but boring center of the movie. “I’m no Diana or Aretha,” she comments to her boyfriend/manager at one point, and she’s right; however, as essayed by Jordin Sparks, a former American Idol winner making her screen debut in the part, she does have a certain presence and the vocal chops to make her A Star is Born moment near the film’s conclusion believable.
This comes after all the familial pyrotechnics between Houston as the iron-willed, religious conservative mother and Sister, the wild oldest daughter, have been pretty much resolved. Ejogo, an African American dead-ringer for Natalie Wood, brings the role of Sister just as much sass and electricity as Lonette McKee did in the original. And she goes down just as quickly as she rises, thanks to her fatal attraction to the handsome Satin (Mike Epps), a successful stand-up comic who lives large and surrounds himself with beautiful women and sycophants.
Dazzled by Sister’s beauty and talent, he nevertheless can’t help grinding her down; soon he’s got her on drugs and making excuses to her siblings when she shows up at gigs bruised and beaten. A second sister, Delores (Tika Sumpter), rounds things out and has a role in the melodramatic showdown between the three sisters and mean ol’ Satin. In between all the fireworks there are well-staged, well-sung numbers that capture the look and feel of the period. (The costume and art department expertly handle the onstage glamour mixed with the backstage tawdry, show biz mileau.)
But it is Houston, as Emma, who really commands the screen. The updated script by Mara Brock Akil imagines Emma as a woman who, like Sister before her, found herself becoming successful in the music business until she, too, fell victim to its excesses. We are told in no uncertain terms that Emma—who has single-handedly raised her three daughters—has spent the bulk of her adult life in conservative penance, suspicious of the secular music world and only raising her own voice in song when in the church. To that end, Houston delivers a powerful version of the gospel standard “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” which is the emotional height of the film. The ironies of the late Houston, with her famously troubled life, playing this part are endless, and they give the scenes between herself and her daughters even more resonance.
I love an old-fashioned, entertaining backstage showbiz story, and Sparkle offers plenty on that score. However, with the passing of Houston it also carries an extra charge—and there is, naturally enough, a melancholy undertone to the entire movie. Designed as a comeback to cinematic glory for Houston (who also executive-produced), Sparkle is instead a bittersweet requiem to the enormously talented singer and actress and a sad reminder of all those movies that will go unmade with her untimely passing.
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