Sparkle (2012)

This remake of Sparkle is going to go down in history as being the last film which co-starred Whitney Houston. It follows the same general plotline as the original, keeping to its 1960s/70s timeline, with a story about sisters growing up as they find fame as a singing group.

There are three sisters--Sister (Carmen Ejogo) the eldest (real name Tammy) who had a failed affair and had to return home; Sparkle (Jordin Sparks), the middle sibling who writes songs but has little ambition; and Dee (Dorothy) who is expected to go to college and become a doctor, something pretty unheard of for a black woman living in this era--the late 1960s and Detroit. Sparkle convinces Sister to perform one of her songs at a club because she is not the performing type, or so she says. They are noticed by two men--Stix, a young manager, and Levi, who eyes the sexy Sister.

Stix happens to see Sparkle at church and eventually convinces her to write songs and form a girl group, with Sister as the lead singer. They do so, without their mother's knowledge; mom (Houston) when she was young also had a failed singing career.

Sister later catches the eye of the prominent comic Satin.  He resents kowtowing to white people but his jokes plays up stereotypes of blacks as dumb and lazy. The girls continue secretly with their group until their mother sees them on tv; the program leads to a potential record deal but also breaks up the family.

The story is not bad but is not overly ambitious--characters' plots go as one would expect. Sister is in an abusive relationship and turns to drugs; Sparkle gets her dream; Dee goes to medical school. The sisters' stories represent dreams of the future, some successful through hard work and others too easily gotten to.  Mom eventually reconciles herself to her daughters' life choices.

The look is pretty glamorized and I wished for a little more grittiness--a single mother with three kids living comfortably in 1960s/70s Detroit does not seem realistic. The girls are always smartly dressed in clothing that look a little too expensive for their means and their hair is always coiffed perfectly.  From time to time the story mentions unrest in Detroit at that time, but that is it. It would have been better to show how tenuous life was then in that city; I didn't get much feel of the era.

Jordin Sparks as Sparkle was not bad but she was not the best actor, nor did she have the most exciting character. Admittedly Sparkle does not get as flashy a storyline as Sister, whose life of bad choices provides a more soapy story. Most of the women's singing was lipsynched so I don't know if those voices were really the actresses (other than that of Whitney Houston).   For me the songs are not memorable nor anthemic, despite many having been written by Curtis Mayfield. They didn't sound to me like hits in the making, for the movie nor for Sparkle's supposed talent.

Derek Luke as Stix I thought was the most natural actor in his role. Omari Hardwick as Levi was also good. Mike Epps was slick as Satin, as per his name, but as expected he comes off as pretty villainous, a rich man tempting you with candy to climb into his car.  Whitney's voice was raspy and not its strongest, but she still has emotion in her acting and singing. Her dialogue and the story of the film ironically reflects her life. I wondered if anyone in her life ever gave her the kinds of talks that her mother character gave her daughters.