CURIUOSITY! ...Said to Myself Mariah Carey!?!?!? Hmmmm ..... I wonder if she can act???

So ...Can You GUESS??? Probably pretty easy to imagine...HUH!?!? O. K.... Now, take Your Imagination DOWN a few notches... And just MAYBE You have guessed it more or less for what it is! ...Or in this case.... What it is NOT!

Probably MY BAD! Usually, I avoid bad movies like the PLAGUE! Well... The EXCEPTION PROVES the RULE! The very BEST I can say about this FILM?????? Well.... Some of the MUSICAL NUMBERS were.... NOT SO BAD! And ...as is the Case with almost EVERY rather bloated Budget Hollywood production... ALL Those standard PRODUCTION VALUES.... You know... Cimemaphotography, editing, sets, costumes, recording and sound engineering etc..... as expected... were all.... Well.... ACCEPTABLE!

The storyline, however, was utterly inane. Deciding not to submit myself to anymore CRUEL + UNUSUAL Punishment... I just had to pull the plug about 1/2 way thru! SORRY!

Need I say anymore??? O. K.... I thought You would agree!

FYI... This REVIEW has like 700 or 800 Characters! Much more than 150.... RIGHT!?!?!?

There is an American Football term called "Piling on". It's a penalty where the opposing team stops the runner and after the play is blown dead, opposing players keep jumping on the guy with ball--a definite no-no. Well, to me, this film conjures up this term, as when the film came out, reviewers seemed to come out of the woodwork to say how terrible the film was. In fact, they took great delight in talking about how bad the film was--shortly after release it was already legendary--perhaps made more so by Mariah Carey's nervous breakdown. Many speculated that this film led to this. Well, while I'd never say this is a good film, it certainly wasn't as bad as they said and it seemed that people were just piling on poor Mariah. Now I am NOT a fan of her music--up until this film, I barely ever heard any of it, but I felt bad for her because of all the hubbub.

As I said, the film isn't good but it isn't terrible. The biggest problems were with the script--which was essentially A STAR IS BORN. The film had already been made too many times by the time Barbra Streisand did it a few decades ago--now, the story is so old and has been done so many times that it just seemed like a giant cliché. In many ways, also, Mariah's character seemed a bit like a battered woman and it felt frustrating that she kept holding on to a guy who was an obvious jerk--making her character seem a bit pathetic. Additionally, the film suffered, at least for me, with a severe case of "music video-itis". In other words, there were so many musical numbers, at times it seemed more like a bunch of music videos strung together with a bare plot--not a real film. Of course, there have been much worse examples of this type of film--such as Paul McCartney's GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET--which had significantly less plot than GLITTER (yes, it is possible).

But, on the positive side, Ms. Carey sure can sing and was absolutely beautiful--in fact, stunning. Also, her acting (which took a lot of abuse) wasn't that bad, either. In fact, had this film gone over a bit better, I could have seen her going on to other acting projects and improving her craft. Now, however, I don't think there's a chance in a billion! So, my overall verdict is that this is an okay film at best. However, it did not deserve all the attention the Razzies gave it--it's not really a movie that is enjoyably bad...just a bit dull and very predictable. However, if you adore her music, you could do a lot worse than see this film.

Poor Mariah. After this film tanked, all she had was her immense fortune and jet-set life.

Seeing 'Glitter' with an open mind, despite its notoriously awful reputation, it is not quite as horrendous to be down there with the worst films of all time, but the problems 'Glitter' has are plentiful and are significant enough to consider it a very bad film still.

The good news is that Mariah Carey does sound absolutely incredible, always have loved her voice with its beautiful tone, emotional connection and uniquely wide range. Also Terrence Howard is quite good and steals scenes.

However, Carey's enviable skills as a singer does not translate in her skills as an actress, it was really strange that an artist with such a huge vocal range (five octaves!) is the complete antithesis in her very one-note and often expressionless acting here, which is devoid of any joy, surprise, sincerity or emotion. The ability to connect emotionally with her songs also doesn't translate in the acting, she looks stiff and bored throughout here.

Unfortunately, the songs here do nothing for her vocal talents either. She sings them very well indeed, but there are far more memorable and emotionally powerful songs from her out there that also display her unique vocal gifts much more. They're not awful, just bland. The rest of the acting is also poor, with Max Beesley being equally lousy and not sounding sure what accent to pull off, while with the characters Carey's is shallow, one-dimensional and very difficult to relate to (which is a huge dividend considering the type of story it is) and the rest are annoying caricatures, a couple even irrelevant to the story.

Even for a film set in the 80s, 'Glitter' does much less than glitter and looks firmly stuck in the 80s. It looks gaudy and too much of the camera work is too gimmicky and amateurish. The structurally wafer-thin script, with clumsy attempts at being hip, embarrassingly unfunny humour and "poignant" moments that come over as emotionally manipulative, sounds even older than that and like an awkwardly written soap-opera rejected at first draft (and should have stayed there).

'Glitter' has very little story, it's very thin and aimless, and padded by the bland and uninspiredly choreographed songs shot like a series of out of date music videos and subplots that come out of nowhere and go very little further than that (i.e. the reappearance of the cat or the reunion with her mother). It starts tedious and loses even more drive as it plods on, and throughout like Carey's performance there's no joy, no emotion and no substance. The direction is decidedly inept.

Overall, not that horrendous but it is no wonder that Carey herself regrets being involved in this. 2/10 Bethany Cox