Sorry, this movie sucks

Instant Favorite.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It took me two tries to get through this movie. Although it did have redeeming qualities, it was kind of boring. If you're a big Mariah Carey fan, I suppose this would be about a 5 but other than that, in my humble opinion, it falls into that "average-bad" category. I can explain what I mean. I've seen a lot of bad movies, for proof you can read some of my other reviews on this site, which are mostly of Bottom 100 movies. When you have seen as many b-movies as I have, some stand out as being alright, while some are just unbelievably terrible and you can't understand how they were ever made. Glitter is between those two categories. It's got some decent music in it, and things do go on (Unlike Gigli or Ishtar). However, it is kind of underwhelming and boring. What really took this movie down a couple of points for me was a unique volume problem. Mariah Carey's acting is okay, but she speaks her lines very softly. This makes me crank up the volume to hear what she is saying. However, leaving it up came back to haunt me later in the movie as there are scenes that are pretty loud and will blast your ears. In conclusion, this is a dime-a-dozen bad movie. It's not super-painful but it's also not quite good enough to be one of those underrated low-budget movies.

Essentially a makeover of "A Star Is Born," this star vehicle for vocally gifted Mariah Carey is one most panned films of the 21st century. For 13 years I avoided it for that reason, but when I finally watched it, I was surprised to find myself in the very small camp that found the movie entertaining, although certainly not wonderful. The script is rather dull, and it keeps interfering with the songs. I found myself saying out loud to the director, "Will you let her finish a song before you cut to more insipid dialog!" There is some really nice music going on during the movie–-not just Carey, but Stevie Wonder and Luther Vandross and others thrown in for good measure. And Terrence Howard steals every scene he is in as the villain.

The start of the movie, mostly black and white with a minimum of color, could have been the start of an Oscar or Golden Globe contender. That's if the quality of the acting and writing had remained the same. The musical quality, on the other hand, never went down--except of course for the fact that the music early on was more sophisticated and much of what came later was mindless but fun dance pop. If you like the kind of music Mariah Carey is known for, "Glitter" delivers. Most of the time I would consider a lot of that music to be garbage. But Mariah is one of the few singers of her style I can stand to listen to, and given that this style of music would be dominant in this movie, I actually found myself enjoying it. All the musicians were talented--except, of course, Sylk--who was secretly replaced by the phenomenal Billie as lead singer and didn't seem to know it as her mike was turned down and Billie's was turned up.I didn't think this movie was so bad overall. Sure, it's depressing, but plenty of good movies are. This wasn't outstanding, but it appeared to be telling a good story. Most of the actors were doing a good job. Toward the end, though, I realized this movie wasn't going to finish what it started, because it was only supposed to run for two hours including commercials. So the finish seemed kind of abrupt, and shocking. Nevertheless, the ending turned out to be satisfying.Of course, everyone seemed to point to one weakness in this movie. Yes, it was obvious Mariah had little acting experience. But in some scenes, I felt she did just fine. In others, where she had no challenge, she seemed capable of only three facial expressions, and one in particular. Wow, if she had really been that happy, this would have been a fun movie. Mariah probably was enjoying herself. Billie, maybe. But with a little imagination, I could pretend that really was Billie and experience the movie as if she was real.It wasn't as bad as everyone seems to think.

Now, I would have absolutely no interest in ever, ever, ever, ever watching this movie. When I saw a photo of Carey teeing off while wearing hot pants and porn-star high heels, I thought, 'This is a girl with not a lepton of virtue or admirability.' Well, okay, she can hit impressively high notes, but that's the only thing. So, when I started a Rifftrax membership and saw that this movie was among those riffed, I thought, 'Well, maybe.' I could only watch the first 20 minutes when I suddenly remembered that the drain in the garage needed mucking and decided that would be more fun and rewarding than watching this piece of schlock.I'm going to jump genres and compare this movie with 'Rock Star', a film similar in its rags-to-riches theme. At least 'Rock Star' had a comedic slant to it and didn't try to pass itself off as high drama. Those involved in making this film took it so seriously that it becomes a mockery in an attempt at gravity. They go to pains to show that Carey had a drunk mom, when to an orphanage but never expanded on those formative events or years. It may have been interesting to have seen the character pass through her formative years and how she became the person she is, how her values and beliefs were established, how the foundation for her adult life was laid. Nah! That's not important in a pseudo-biographical film. Let's jump right to the bootie-shaking. The songs even draw from a well of sophomoric offerings that Carey has penned.This is a long way to a short point. This movie just sucked.