Sparkle movie 2012 full movie online10/5/2023 ![]() Her other sister, Dolores (Tika Sumpter), is a proto-Black Power firebrand who takes on potential record-industry grifters like a ’60s Wendy Day. Her wild-child older sister, Sister (Carmen Ejogo), is a sort of Motor City Ishtar, a tsunami of melisma, swiveling hips, sex, drugs and violence. Sparks is tasked with playing the wallflower in a family full of forceful personalities, which does the inexperienced thesp no favors. She’s certainly likable enough, and it’s not her fault that she frequently disappears from view in her own movie. Director Salim Akil’s remake tones down its predecessor’s incipient weirdness, and relocates the action to late-’60s Detroit, where mousy young church singer Sparkle ( Jordin Sparks) is eager to break into the soul scene exploding all around her.Īn “Idol” alum whose career has been idling for the past few years, Sparks should see a healthy Q-rating bump from her first starring role here she’s cute as a button and can belt with the best of ’em, even if her range of expression is mostly limited to the extremes of either ecstatic well-being or lip-quivering sadness. ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER 1970Ģ000s (16) 2010s (6) 2020s (3) 40s (8) 50s (20) 60's (85) 70's (139) 70s (1) 80's (26) 90's (15) 90s (1) Agnes Moorehead (2) Alan Alda (3) Alan Arkin (2) Alan Bates (4) Alan J.The 1976 original, which featured music from Curtis Mayfield and a script by a young Joel Schumacher, focused on a trio of sibling singers in 1950s Harlem, stitching together a zany patchwork of great music, overheated melodrama and risible social commentary.Without McKee, Sparkle becomes a little too light for its own good. McKee's sad eyes and nicely rendered tough-girl stance carry with them a kind of authentic emotional gravitas. Indeed, had Lonette McKee been given the opportunity to be the kind of dominant presence in the film as she is in the lives of her sisters, I think the audience would have found itself mourning her absence along with the characters on the screen. A more intuitive director than Sam O'Steen (editor of Rosemary's Baby, making his feature film directorialĭebut) might have sensed how strongly the prolonged absence of the film's mostĭimensional and dynamic character would have on Sparkle's overall impact. Good that the temperature of the film drops several degrees for every minute that (for "Flashdance…what a Feeling"), it's Lonette McKee who gives my favorite Star in later years as actress, recording artist, and Academy Award-winning songwriter Studio, the financial prospects of an Aretha Franklin album must have appearedĪ great deal more lucrative than that of a soundtrack album to a modest filmĮxclusive Motown choreographer whose routines for musical acts like The Supremes and The Temptations were the inspiration for Lester Wilson's work in SparkleĪlthough the delectably fresh-faced Irene Cara emerged the bigger The film's cast interpretation of the songs, one has to imagine that, to the Although I've read conflictingĪccounts over the years as to the whys of this decision, and while I personally prefer ![]() The songs, as sung by the film's cast, are all so well-performed that there was an outcry from fans when the soundtrackĪretha Franklin taking over the vocals exclusively. ![]() Staple of girl-group performances for years. The stylized, often witty, gesture/posing dance style that became an identifying Riffs on the early R&B/Soul sound of Motown, while Wilson's choreography captures Mayfield's songs are pop/funk, '70s-style Self-effacing Sparkle Williams (Irene Cara)…i.e., the obvious heroine of theĪs a fan of musicals, Sparkle's primary appeal for me has always been Curtis Mayfield's catchy musical score and the sleek, '60s girl-group choreography of Lester Wilson. Self-assured, and headed-for-certain-trouble Sister Williams (Lonette McKee), one-third of the gospel-singing Williams sisters, consisting of woke, budding Black-Power radical, Delores Williams (Dwan Smith) and sweet-natured, "I want the big time!" conveniently asserts beautiful, Sparkle is a '50s girl group take on the oft-told show-biz saga of gifted performers from humbleīeginnings who discover, only too late, that the road to fame is paved with The beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement. ![]() And the songs prefigure the emergent voices of inner-city youth and Seedy R&B/soul circuit pay homage to the Black roots of rock The small-time show-biz milieu of Harlem jazz clubs and the They represent as conflicting symbols of Black upward mobility andĬrossover success. The girl-group plotline evokes The Supremes and all
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