Glitter

In Glitter, Mariah Carey plays a role that cannot be far removed from herself. She plays the hopeful Billie Frank, who wants to be a singing star.

The film can only be of interest to a very small audience, namely the singer's most loyal fans, for as a film it is a failure. Glitter does not even deserve to be called a drama, for it is almost devoid of drama. There are no dramatic high points, no complications or obstacles worth mentioning, and those are the be-all and end-all if a story is to work.

If you search hard, you can find a slight hint of drama in Billie's relationship with her mother, who abandoned her as a child, and in her relationship with her boyfriend Julian, who becomes jealous of her success. On the whole, however, becoming a megastar is a bed of roses for Billie. It is quite simply boring.

Apart from a couple of isolated comic moments, the dialogue is also utterly vacuous, and all the characters are uninteresting and, in the case of Billie's two dorky childhood friends, also thoroughly irritating.