All of those involved in aiding Mariah Carey‘s effort to return to emotional
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.”
