SPARKLE: Blu-ray (Robert Stigwood Productions, 1976) Warner Archive

Shades of the meteoric highs and devastating lows of every musical protégée story ever told on celluloid are regurgitated ad nauseam in Sam O’Steen’s Sparkle (1976); about as abysmal and as cliché as every rags to riches faux biopic can get. Take your pick of hyperbole on display: ‘It’s lonely at the top’ or how about ‘cocaine and fame do not mix.’ Toss in the grit of Harlem, a battered woman, and a stoic black maid raising three grown girls on her own, and a few ill-timed shoop-shoop doo-wop ditties, mostly written by Curtis Mayfield, and performed with intermittent – though alas, monophonic lack of clarity by rising stars, Irene Cara, Lonette McKee, Dwan Smith, and, Philip ‘Miami Vice’ Michael Thomas (in very fine voice), and the results are…well, tepid at best, and deadly dull at their worst. The whole of Sparkle – metaphorically speaking – can be distilled into one sentence, or rather, four flat words; girl singer makes good. Sparkle is, of course, a euphemism for the essential quality necessary to separate the singers from the stars. It also happens to be the name of Irene Cara’s doe-eyed ingenue; the baby of the family, whose elder siblings, Dolores (Dwan) and ‘Sister’ (McKee) are put on the fast track to nowhere by the entrepreneurial spirit of Stix (Thomas) and his straggler/buddy, Levi (Dorian Harewood) who believes in Sister’s beauty, as well as her ability to bring down the house, but is ill-equipped to keep the wolves from her front door. One in particular – Satin (Tony King), who uses up cute little tricks in shoe leather like Kleenex. Given ‘Sister’s’ tart-mouthed savvy towards her mother’s well-meaning, but oft outspoken best friend, Mrs. Waters (Beatrice Winde), Sister’s eyes are easily bedazzled by Satin’s sly invitation to an all-night soiree. Several scenes later and all that promise and talent have been broken down to bedrock. Sister has become Satin’s cocaine-addicted whore, readily beaten into submission for no apparent reason, other than Satin’s modus operandi seems to be he enjoys beating on little girls.

In a little over an hour and a half, Sparkle damn well wears out its welcome – and fast; producer, Robert Stigwood (the fellow yet to give us the iconic, Saturday Night Fever, 1977, and, Grease, 1978) delivering a hot mess of forgettable tripe, so utterly lifeless, joyless and without distinction, one cannot even begin to suggest it was made, either from hunger, or from the vantage of a blind-sighted/pie-eyed novice. I am not entirely certain what sense of realism cinematographer, Bruce Surtees is going for here; photographing the production numbers from behind the shadowy armpits of attendees in the crowd, and constantly obstructing the camera’s view of the action by placing people and props in front of his line of sight. The lack luster story, cobbled together by Howard Rosenman and Joel Schumacher could have been camouflaged by some brilliant cinematography. Instead, Surtees offers us no such glimmers – not of brilliance, but mere competence. Does he actually know what end of the lens should be pointed at the action? Sparkle is an interesting title, much more so than the movie, because the story hacked together by Rosenman and Schumacher is not immediately about the youngest daughter of this singing trio. Indeed, Irene Cara – who would dazzle us as one of the stand-out performers in the ensemble musical, Fame four years later – spends the early scenes in Sparkle virgin-esque and resisting Stix’s passionate rooftop kisses or nervously hiding behind the extended and undulating arms of her more flamboyant ‘Sister’ while singing backup.

To be sure, there is a certain innocence to Cara’s performance that briefly begins to emerge from beneath all this heavy-handed rubbish as genuine and winning, particularly during her duet with Thomas’s Stix inside a recording booth, ‘Look into Your Heart.’ Otherwise, she is restrained from offering anything by way of real acting ability. Ditto for Lonette McKee, who preens horrendously like a Burlesque queen while part of the act, but spends the rest of her scenes in various stages of undressed, or splayed across Satin’s satin bed sheets; strung out and patiently waiting for his angry fist to make contact with her head. Sparkle is a dour ‘rags to riches’ story – its own ‘sparkle’ wasted on a few gaudy costume changes; designer, Daniel Paredes’ dressing these singing sisters from horn to hoof in violent red ensembles – the standout hue in an otherwise colorless palette that favors dark/drab browns, overcast blues and muddy grays. Where is the vivacity? Gone, it seems, as easily as the act, so effectively brought together by Stix and Levi, suddenly blown into the wind; Dolores, quitting cold turkey, though not before she gives her mother, Effie (Mary Alice) a good piece of her mind; squandering her homemaker’s talents on workin’ for the uptown white folk – affluent, though ironically, also involved in organized crime.  Mafioso, Max Gerber (Paul Lambert) wants his share of Sparkle’s instant fame. To this end, he allows Stix to borrow $10,000 with 16% interest on the payback, presumably, secure that the fledgling and her manager will be unable to cover their debts. Instead, Stix – a real upstanding kind of guy – makes good on his promise and repays the loan in record time. As Sparkle prepares to open for Ray Charles at Carnegie Hall, Stix is taken hostage by Gerber’s backers who are unable to convince him to reconsider their involvement in the girl’s future. What happens next is an absurd ‘feel good’. The Mafia reconsider Stix’s chutzpah at denying them their toehold in Sparkle’s career and release him in time to catch her in concert.    

Sparkle is so woefully misguided and feckless about the realities of the music industry it miserably fails to hit even a base level of mediocrity that would make it as passable B-grade tripe with a C-grade script and budget to boot.  The central story switches focus in mid-tale; first, from Sister’s struggles to overcome cocaine addiction and an abusive lover (spoiler, she never does, but pulls a Whitney Houston instead), leaving the narrative centered on Sparkle, who wails a spiritual at Sister’s funeral before having her own heart broken by Stix. He, in turn, briefly surrenders his aspirations in the music industry, moves away and becomes a construction worker. The couple’s break up in the pouring rain is such a chestnut of the romance movie, one sincerely wonders what O’Steen, Stigwood and his writers were thinking to include such a soppiest/foppish homage to it herein. Upon Stix’s return, Sparkle – who has had to grow up considerably since last they spoke – admonishes him for his shortsightedness in their romance. He apologizes and later, returns to set Sparkle’s feet upon the path of a Diana Ross-styled singing sensation.

I won’t go on any more about Sparkle, except to add that whatever you have heard about its reputation is all bad, even at a glance, and a woefully undernourished travesty of a picture once you have actually made the investment of time to sit through it.  The Warner Archive’s Blu-ray release is further cause to be baffled. Not only is the image herein well below par for what usually passes for WAC’s hi-def quality control, but to actually have fast-tracked Sparkle ahead of its myriad of bona fide classics still MIA on Blu-ray is, frankly, a colossal waste of allocated dollars that could have – and should have – been spent on more viable product coming down the pipeline. Colors here are wan and muddy. Grain is so heavy, as it likely was when the picture was shown theatrically, that it distracts instead of complimenting the visuals – such as they are. Contrast seems exaggerated. The overall image is dark, soft and slightly out of focus. Only close-ups escape such scrutiny, revealing a modicum of fine detail otherwise lost in this presentation. Sparkle’s mono soundtrack gets a 1.0 DTS remastering effort that is chronically strident, thin and without…well – sparkle! Truly, this one sounds about as ugly as it looks! Extras are limited to a theatrical trailer. Bottom line: Sparkle belongs in that rare category of out-and-out movie rejects, so thought-numbing, absurd, charm-free and clueless in its execution, it can safely be skipped in its entirety without the viewer having reservations something has been missed on even a moment’s worth of entertainment value. Sparkle was remade in 2012. And although not an altogether successful affair either, director, Salim Akil’s reboot looks like Citizen Kane next to O’Steen’s original. Pass, and be exceedingly glad that you did!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

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VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

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