Glitter

DIRECTED BY Vondie Curtis-Hall
STARRING Mariah Carey, Max Beesley, Ann Magnuson
Columbia/Tristar


Halfway through Mariah Carey’s Glitter, a dubious remake of A Star Is Born, the singer’s character — Billie Frank, pop diva — is approached by a Hollywood producer eager to cast her. The scene seems intended as an in-joke, given that, aside from her blink-and-you’ll-be-glad-to-have-missed-it cameo in The Bachelor, Glitter represents Carey’s big-screen debut.

Sadly, the in-joke is on the producer. By now, the idea of casting Carey in anything other than a push-up bra commercial has become laughable for all the wrong reasons, thanks to an acting technique that entails portraying every emotion — surprise, anger, existential ennui — by widening those already doe-like eyes and clutching her ample breast.

Not that the singer-turned-“actress” is entirely to blame for the most disagreeable cinematic experience of 2001. Max Beesley’s green-eyed producer-cum-lover is almost as unconvincing, and director Vondie Curtis-Hall’s attempt to refresh the creaky rags-to-riches-to-disenchantment plot by setting it in the mid-’80s involves little more than coating Carey with the odd smear of silver paint (a stylistic quirk that might mislead you into thinking Billie’s actually a part-time house painter).

We could, like Glitter, go on and on. But suffice it to say that only in its blissfully few musical sequences does Glitter succeed as a period piece — by reminding us how much rotten, sub-Prince crapola that most damned of decades managed to put out.