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health ought to be advised to keep the reviews of Glitter, her movie

debut, away from her -- or at least limit her newspaper reading to the

Los Angeles Times.

Every other major critic who reviewed it -- it was

apparently not screened for many -- found the singer's acting ability to be

as deplorable as the film's script. Claudia Puig in USA Today

comments: "As she attempts to launch a movie career, it appears a

shimmering film star has not been born."

She "is simply inadequate as an

actress to the relatively undemanding emotional range of the story," writes

Lawrence Van Gelder in the New York Times.

Joe Morgenstern in the

Wall Street Journal blasts "the definitive awfulness of this star

vehicle" and asks: "How could a major studio -- in this case 20th Century

Fox -- put its name on a production with a dim-bulb, tone-deaf script that

piles howler on howler? Why couldn't someone save poor Ms. Carey from

herself?"

Several critics remark that audiences at preview screenings often

broke into laughter during scenes intended to evoke tears. "Glitter

Just Guffaw-ful!" is the headline above Jack Mathews' review in the

New York Daily News. Mathews writes that Carey's performance is

"astonishingly bad, awkward beyond anything one could imagine."

Comments

Jonathan Foreman in the New York Post: "Helplessly clichéd,

predictable and unaware of its own lameness, it could easily become a camp

classic."

But Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times figures the film

ought to do well in theaters this weekend. "In the wake of last week's

terrorist attacks," he writers, "Glitter is the week's only major

Hollywood release, and it offers considerable escapist entertainment while

hitting an affirmative note."