In 2001 Mariah Carey and company released this bouncy colorful and all around awful movie into an only ten day post 9/11 startled and stunned world. In this Mariah Carey pop star vehicle full of neon colors, star wipes, fades and of course - Glitter, this movie had found zero place in society. A lot of this films’ failure was trumped up to the incredibly poor timing of its release. Yet, here we are in the year 2019 and it’s continued to maintain a reputation as a badly acted, directed, and written flick and was practically laughed out of theaters by audiences. Mariah Carey won a Razzie for Worst Actress and to this day will not let anyone close to her discuss this movie and refers to it as “the G-word.” I think this movie literally made it’s star go insane. Her promotion for the movie was tainted by bizarre behavior and what seemed like a complete meltdown. In fact, I think you need to be functioning on a different plane of existence to even understand what is happening in Glitter.
So naturally, I neeeeeded to watch it. In the depths of my soul I yearned to see this other kind of disaster flick. Grabbing my husband,Matt, (@dickdangers) who is also a fan of the fantastically bad, and wonderfully campy, as well as grabbing one of my besties, Ty Comeuppance, who is one half of a duo who reviews so bad they’re good action flicks (@TyComeuppance of Comeuppance Reviews)
At their reluctance, we all settled in to watch Glitter. It was time for us to determine once and for all, is this a misunderstood awesomely bad movie we love, or just another schlock fest?!?
After watching, I can see why Mariah had to go bye bye for a while.
Glitter opens in the 70s to a singer named Lillian Frank singing in a night club while her tween daughter watches mesmerized, then joins her mother on stage to show that those bluesy pipes were definitely handed down. AND then sparkles with her high note register. You find out that they are poor, Lillian is a single mom, and it’s implied that she’s neglectful and has some drug or alcohol issues going on. She falls asleep with a lit cigarette while sitting upright in a chair. A fire breaks out, and Lillian’s daughter, Billie, is taken away and put into the foster care system. Throughout these moments of what feels like a gripping mother daughter tale about to unfold, we are pushed into each randomly timed new segment with a weird wipe or fade, and sometimes rando rainfalls of glitter. Every time that happens, you think ok, this must be a later point in time, like now we’re going to flash to the grown up Billie, or like a miracle about to happen or something. But that never happens. When you do finally flash to grown up Billie - a club partying Mariah, THERE’S NO WIPE! It’s confusing. Everything goes from a sad but interesting mother daughter story to a technicolor highway of numbing dumb and you remember, right, I’m watching a pretentious star vehicle.
Now we are told it’s 1983 - and everything looks like it’s made by Lisa Frank. It’s like we suddenly teleport into the middle of a completely different movie that eagerly borrows from every 80s pop star cliche movie ever. The music is jumpin’ and the colors are neon vivid. Every song sounds like a Prince rip-off, borrowing from the original and best pretentious star vehicle of all time - Purple Rain. From this point there is no telling how much time lapses. At some points it seems like it’s been a day, other points it feels like years. The wipes happen more and more randomly. There’s really no way of telling. You’re a Mariah Carey time traveler now, let’s get incoherent.
MC, or Billie Frank makes some NYC besties that feel like the Supremes and she loves them sooooo much, but will ditch them for a better opportunity at a moments notice. Borrowing from the Nomi Malone School of Thought, MC / Billie continues to play I’m a victim, I’m a star, I’m a horrible human being throughout the film. She gets discovered by Terrence Howard playing Timothy, but who cares, who is looking for backup singers for his special lady friend’s girl group. Naturally, super talented Mariah and her NYC besties are contracted for the job and the glitter is flying.
Surprise, surprise, turns out Terrence Howards’ special lady friend is all bod and beauty and her singing is horrid. So in a gasp 80s moment, they Milli Vanilli that shit and get Bod and Beauty to lip sync MC/Billie’s real vocals. They explode onto the music scene with a big club date and a single with Bod and Beauty looking like she’s about to make it big time and acting like she’s the Big Bad. Tricky little Nomi/ Mariah/Billie blows Bod and Beauty’s cover out of the water by singing backstage after their big club performance, proving she is the real talent in the group. They get discovered by disc jockey Julian, better known as Dice, or Chilly D, or Not Tommy Mottola. He’s onto Nomi/ Mariah’s game and shows the whole club she was the real songstress behind the girl group. Everybody lovers her and now she’s the pretty little ingenue. Here is where it starts to feel like a child's version of an ingenues’ rise to fame. This is also the point where all three of us viewing Glitter began trying to keep each other awake to the end.
Terrence Howard makes a deal with Chilly D/ Dice for MC/Billie. He wants to write some songs with her. So he bargains to buy out her contract, completely ignoring the fact that he has zero money. Terrence Howard agrees and goes back to his sad lady friends’ quest for fame, but he’s not happy about it.
Chilly D Dice and Billie/Nomi begin to make music in and out of the sheets and start a falling in love montage. At this point I think Mariah is constantly singing a Robert Palmer cover, but am never sure if that’s the song. But hey, she’s got a hit song on the radio now! Things start to get weird as Billie’s star rises. Naive little Billie turns into her fully Nomi Malone/Mariah Carey realized diva. It’s here we all start to notice a blurring of the diva Mariah Carey and the newly christened diva, Billie Frank. For example MC/Billie start to sport a silver paint stripe on her body in different places throughout the movie. Why? No one knows. She’s a star baby, a STAR. She defies logic. We also start to notice that Mariah is only filmed on one side of her face. Gotta keep that good side shining bright.
Chilly Dice starts to take the hint and not to be outdone, gets an ego trip of his own. Dice starts acting like a tough guy with a NYC gangster stereotype accent that fades in and out with his temper. He starts taking control of both Billie and her career as he man handles her, yells at her, getting drunk and acting like a dick so much that even her Supreme back up friends that were kicked to the curb in favor of a solo act, can’t handle being around Dice anymore. Although you think they would have said something before they are squeezed out of their own group and put on the friendship shelf.
Ultimately Billie bounces after she finds out DJ Chilly Dice STILL never paid Terrence Howard and spent the night in jail for his belligerent behavior. She gets her revenge on him by collaborating with other artists and making even more hit songs, once again dropping the people she loves for better opportunity. But then she starts to miss him. And he starts to miss her. The time hopping is all a flutter, has it been a year? Four years? Three days? Who knows! They suddenly get on this superhuman love wave length and begin separately WRITING THE SAME FUCKING SONG. She’s writing the lyrics and he is writing the music without any actual communication. Well this must be true love! MC Billie Nomi goes to DJ Julian Dice’s house, just narily missing him. She proceeds to break into his house and sees the sheet music to her heart song that Dice had been working on. She kisses the sheet music and leaves.
Now that Billie is hella famous after her 5 minute, or 1 week to 6 year God knows how long rise to fame, she is obviously going on to play Madison Square Garden. She’s rich, she’s famous, she’s back in love. She walks into the her dressing room only to see her management team freaking out over the news. DJ Julian Dice Chilly D has been shot in the back by Terrence Howard. He’s dead. The dysfunctional love of her life and mentor that launched her career is gone forever. But the show simply MUST go on! Dramatically, MC Mariah Billie Frank takes the stage wearing a silver glittery gown and says with exactly zero emotion "Everybody out there, don't ever take anybody ... for granted." and perfectly sings the song they wrote together without writing it together, or practicing it, or knowing how the music goes played all the way through. This could have been an amazing emotional moment. This could have even been a campy emotional moment. Or a scenery chewing emotional moment ala Neely O’Hara. But instead it is the most wooden bullshit moment of the entire movie, and exactly where I mentally jumped ship and said a million fuck you’s.
Just when you think it’s over, they beam you back off the time hopping ship to the original storyline. When you no longer care about that interesting mother daughter tale of redemption, they force feed you that loose end. Conveniently, Dice had left a congratulatory note for Billie on her playing Madison Square Garden, he tells her he tracked down her mother and enclosed her current address. It was a surprise for her. Billie Mariah is driven in her limo all the way from the Garden to rural Tennessee (I think it’s Tennessee, but if not, who cares!!!) to her mama and reunites with hugs and tears, but zero explanations. Fade to credits, you’re asleep.
I sat for so long with this flick, trying to figure out how this ended up being the final product. This movie took from 1997 to 2001 to make. It was shelved for album obligations due to Mariah’s contract with Columbia. Surely someone continued to work on this. Didn’t they? It must have gone through a bunch of different hands. But as my brain continued to dissect and I thought about what Matt and Ty had to say about it from their perspective, it kind of dawned on me. Everyone made terrible choices and no one bothered to put a reality filter on. This was an ego trip set to music.
The script - the screenwriter had been responsible for some serious stinkers. The characters turn on a dime out of nowhere, Some of the dialogue is repeated back and forth using the same exact words and phrases like a ball being lazily passed back and forth. Also there are too many subplots that seem to clog up the main storyline. There’s no time for them to develop or be given the proper attention in the movie’s time frame. It makes all the characters feel even more frivolous.
The lighting, the design all around from the clothing to the hairstyles seemed to fade in and out of the 80s era like Dice’s New York gangster accent. Is it the 80s, the 90s, or 2001? What???
Not one character is likable. Every person is selfish and self serving. Again I compare this to Showgirls, another Hollywood tale of the big bad business of being famous run by unlikable characters that people continue to help and bend backwards for despite their BS. The difference of course being that despite all the bad, Showgirls is funny! This was just…. A trainwreck. At the end of the day despite her talent, Billie is unlikable and kind of sad, her life never really has a big happy ending. She’s just an asshole who got famous and found her mom .
Here’s the breakdown:
Best Parts - It’s Trash Yourself Cinema
The Music is Kinda Fun
Obscure 80s References Like Chilly D
Worst Parts - The Rest!
Jill - 1 Pliskin Matt - 1 Pliskin Ty - 1 Pliskin
References:
Glitter Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitter_(film)
IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118589/ 
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