Movie review: Sparkle

Sparkle is a musical set in the 1960s about a singing group. Yeah, I know, cliche. Wthe cast includes Whitney Houston, Jordin Sparks, Derek Luke, Carmen Ejogo, Mike Epps,Tika Sumpter..... Whitney plays a mother of three who tries to keep her three daughters away from the music business, but they do the best they can to get into the music business. Sister, the eldest, played by Ejogo, is the lead singer in the group, and tries her best to push the group to stardom, while engaging in a relationship with a comedian called Satin (Epps), who, at the ends, turns out to be detrimental to Sister and the girls' future as a singing group. Here, Derek Luke plays a Gordy/ Curtis Taylor Jr kind of character here. In general, I think the movie is good, a little cliche, and deemed as the inferior look-alike of Bill Condon's Dreamgirls. Granted, the movie is about Sparkle (Spark's character), and everyone is going to see this movie because of the legendary Whitney Houston, but Carmen Ejogo managed to carved a niche for herself with her electrifying and magnificent performance as Sister. She lights every scene she is in with her mesmerizing performance and disarming voice, so mesmerizing that when you leave the theater, you forget about Houston and Sparks and start thinking about Carmen Ejogo. She might be in for a serious treat in the forthcoming awards season. Truly Oscar worthy. Mike Epps is another actor that managed to surprise me in this movie. The normally comedic actor, decided to take a dramatic and quite a villainous turn in Sparkle, and he gave a surprisingly great non-comedic performance as the movie's main antagonist, making him one to consider seriously.

 As for miss Houston, I must say, she gave quite an amazing performance, what I would term an amazing goodbye. Even her voice, definitely not as good as before, was till spellbinding, especially when she rendered 'his eyes is on the sparrow' sending me chills down my spine. As for Jordin, her acting wasn't as good as her co-stars, perhaps she didn't use an acting coach for this movie. My advice, she should sharpen her acting skills, get more acting roles, and of course, have an acting coach. But she needs no vocal coach, as she sang amazingly in the movie. In general, my rating for this movie is 5.8/10.