Getting our hands on this movie was a process. In this age of digital media not always being preserved if it's not profitable, this movie was clearly deemed "not worth the effort to host and/or charge for." We had no choice but to take to the high seas and wait over a month for the film to come through. But download it did, and it was pretty worth the wait.
Billie Frank a.k.a. Mariah Carey, in a black and white flashback, is put in a group home after her alcoholic singer mother accidentally burns down their house with a lit cigarette. The two friends she makes there go on to form a dance crew with her and they are all discovered at a club and hired as backups for a singer who sucks played by Padma Lakshmi. The producer, played by Terrence Howard, discovered that Billie can sing really well and pulls a Singin' In The Rain, using her voice instead, which both singers are weirdly cool with. After a performance, a DJ named Dice realizes it's Billie singing and decides he's going to make her a star. He offers $100,000 to buy out her contract but never pays it. Over the next hour or so they fall in love and move in together while we have Billie recording songs but no full album, shooting a video that gets awkward, and getting criticized for showing too much skin by Dice who drinks and becomes more unhinged. She leaves him to go back to her friends who got left behind and records a song with Eric Benet who seemed like a potential romantic rival but surprisingly isn't. Before her big sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden, confusing since she still doesn't even have a full album, she breaks into Dice's house a leaves a little message for him. He is shot by Terrance Howard's character right after for not paying up, and Billie goes onstage right after learning of his death. On the drive home she opens a letter from Dice that says he found her mom and she's sober and living in Maryland so Billie just hauls herself there still in her performance dress and the film ends with her crying in her mom's arms.
First of all, this movie's plot is insane. It's not over-the-top or anything, but we have a story that somehow has no real character arcs and no clear themes. The movie's timeline even feels like it takes place over just a few months. The movie seems to want us to root for Billie and Dice, but Dice kind of sucks. It wants us to feel happy that Billie found her mom at the end, but it's not like her journey feels as motivated by that as it should. Sure, her mom was a singer, but Dice seems to want to make her famous with her being completely indifferent. It feels like Billie was written as blandly as possible to not ruin any idea about Carey and maybe also so her acting would be perfectly fine and unchallenging.
Aside from the plot, the editing and costumes are jarring. The film speeds up and slows down all the time, and the cinematography is crap. The first ten minutes are in black and white because we have to know it's the past. The movie takes place in the 80s, but occasionally the costumes are straight out of the late 90s/early 2000s. Billie one time wears low-rise flare jeans and a tank top with a rhinestone message on the front like every girl in my middle school. Also, seemingly to justify the title, Billie always has a random streak of glitter somewhere on her body in all her performances or official outings. This is never explained or even commented on.
Then there are the side characters. There are two producers early on who have distinct creep vibes but they turn out to be barely in the film (kind of thankfully because we were all fearing a Showgirls moment if you know what I mean). The best bad character though is the music video director who is both kind of racist and very misogynistic in the most unsubtle way. We could have had more of his nonsense.
Overall, yeah, it sparkled for all the right reasons.
Spoon Rating: 6
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