Every year we get one movie like "Showgirls" or "The Lonely Lady" or "Battlefield Earth" that shines like zircon, and for 2001, it's "Glitter," Mariah Carey's eminently embarrassing star vehicle. Wandering through the film with one expression (eyes wide, mouth slightly agape -- one recalls Kathy Ireland's "dull surprise" during the MST3K screening of "Alien from L.A."), Carey has zero screen presence. At times, she looks like a Muppet version of Kathie Lee Gifford, and her performance never indicates that her character is anything more than a straw being carried by the winds of the contrived plot.
The one bright spot in this tacky mess: Ann Magnuson as a hyped-up record label P.R. person. The movie is ostensibly set in 1983 New York nightclub circles (although there's not a single grain of cocaine in the movie), but the only person who looks like they're in the right decade is Magnuson, whose hair, clunky jewelry, and shoulder pads are absolutely right-on. (As a survivor of that era, she probably dug that stuff out of her own closet.) She's also very funny and a real live wire, and easily walks away with the movie while everyone else is sleepwalking.
Carey's high-pitched musical career will no doubt continue apace (after all, the dreadful "Sincerely Yours" didn't sink Liberace's stellar career), but I can only hope that she one day develops a sense of humor about this movie, since camp aficionados will no doubt be hosting midnight screenings of this doozy until the apocalypse. Just look for the drag queens with the inexplicable stripe of silver makeup on their biceps. (See the movie, and you'll know what I mean.)
The one bright spot in this tacky mess: Ann Magnuson as a hyped-up record label P.R. person. The movie is ostensibly set in 1983 New York nightclub circles (although there's not a single grain of cocaine in the movie), but the only person who looks like they're in the right decade is Magnuson, whose hair, clunky jewelry, and shoulder pads are absolutely right-on. (As a survivor of that era, she probably dug that stuff out of her own closet.) She's also very funny and a real live wire, and easily walks away with the movie while everyone else is sleepwalking.
Carey's high-pitched musical career will no doubt continue apace (after all, the dreadful "Sincerely Yours" didn't sink Liberace's stellar career), but I can only hope that she one day develops a sense of humor about this movie, since camp aficionados will no doubt be hosting midnight screenings of this doozy until the apocalypse. Just look for the drag queens with the inexplicable stripe of silver makeup on their biceps. (See the movie, and you'll know what I mean.)