It's 1958 Harlem. 15 year old Sparkle Williams (Irene Cara) falls for Stix (Philip M. Thomas). He becomes the manager of her and her two older sisters in a girl singing group.
This has elements of blaxploitation. It has the sex and drugs. It's also a traditional music biopic construction. The music is downright old school. In the disco era, this must have stuck out like a sore thumb. It's basically a darker Dreamgirls. The filmmaking is a little lackluster. The director has most of his credits as an editor. That's really his day job while he dabbles in directing. The two leads are fine and they would go on to do bigger things. Irene Cara is a great singer along with the other characters. The side characters don't get much shine. They are mostly two dimensional roles. This doesn't have the flash to sparkle and it's not dark enough to be dangerous. It's somewhere in the middle and that's this movie. It's stuck in the middle.
This has elements of blaxploitation. It has the sex and drugs. It's also a traditional music biopic construction. The music is downright old school. In the disco era, this must have stuck out like a sore thumb. It's basically a darker Dreamgirls. The filmmaking is a little lackluster. The director has most of his credits as an editor. That's really his day job while he dabbles in directing. The two leads are fine and they would go on to do bigger things. Irene Cara is a great singer along with the other characters. The side characters don't get much shine. They are mostly two dimensional roles. This doesn't have the flash to sparkle and it's not dark enough to be dangerous. It's somewhere in the middle and that's this movie. It's stuck in the middle.