Plot Outline
Billie Frank (Mariah Carey) is a shy, young mixed-race girl who is sent away by her alcoholic mother at a very early age. At an orphanage, she befriends Louise and Roxanne. Flash forward to 1983. Billie and her friends are spotted by a record producer, Timothy Walker, who wants them to sing backup for his latest pop-music discovery. But when super DJ Dice hears Billie's incredible voice, he makes a shady deal with Timothy to get her out of that dead-end situation. Soon, Billie and Dice are making hits inside the studio, and falling in love outside of it. Eventually, the pressure of her new-found celebrity puts too heavy a strain on Billie, forcing her to decide what it is she really wants from Dice, and what she wants for herself.
Cast & Crew
CAST
| Mariah Carey | ...... | Billie Frank |
| Max Beesley | ...... | Julian Dice |
| Da Brat | ...... | Louise |
| Tia Texada | ...... | Roxanne |
| Valarie Pettiford | ...... | Lillian Frank |
| Terrence Howard | ...... | Timothy Walker |
| Dorian Harewood | ...... | Guy Richardson |
| Grant Nickalls | ...... | Jack Bridges |
| Eric Benét | ...... | Rafael |
| Padma Lakshmi | ...... | Julian Dice |
| Ann Magnuson | ...... | Sylk |
| Isabel Gomes | ...... | Young Billie |
CREW
Directed by
Vondie Curtis-Hall
Writing credits
Cheryl L. West (story)
Kate Lanier (screenplay)
Images
Downloads
Trailer
Wallpapers
Avatars
Soundtrack
Release: September 11, 2001
BB Albums Peak: #7
1. Loverboy (Remix)
2. Lead The Way
3. If We
4. Didn't Mean To Turn You On
5. Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica)
6. All My Life
7. Reflections (Care Enough)
8. Last Night A DJ Saved My Life
9. Want You
10. Never Too Far
11. Twister
12. Loverboy
Other songs that were used in the film include:
Lillie's Blue - Mariah Carey
The Message - Grandmaster Flash
You're The One For Me - D Train
Relax - Franke Goes To Hollywood
Never Too Much - Luther Vandross
Heart Of Glass - Blondie
Freaks Come Out At Night - Whodini
Last Night A DJ Saved My Life - Indeep
All I Do - Stevie Wonder
Moments In Love - Art Of Noise
Trivia
- During filming, tracks using backup singer Mary Ann Tatum were used in place of Mariah Carey's voice to avoid bootlegging. Carey recorded her vocals close to the release date of the soundtrack, and all lead vocals used in the film are hers.
- The movie is based on an idea by Mariah Carey that kept bouncing back from studio to studio starting in 1997, and the singer began writing songs for the soundtrack album prior to the movie even getting a green light. Carey admits that when the project was approved for production (2000), she found songs for the movie that she had written and forgotten about. She was only supposed to do six songs, however many collaborations with current and 1980s producers, writers, and artists including Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and the late Rick James led to growth for her track listing, which became the entire soundtrack. A song by her and Prince was also in development, but it did not make the deadline in time for soundtrack reproduction, packaging, and distribution.
- Release of the movie was postponed for three weeks when star Mariah Carey was hospitalized as a result of an "emotional and physical breakdown".
Press Reviews
AMAZON.COM
By Jeff Shannon
Despite box-office failure and the highly publicized fatigue of its star at the time of its fall 2001 release, Glitter is a surprisingly effective vehicle for pop diva Mariah Carey, who will delight her many fans in her appealing screen debut. The standard rags-to-riches plot unfolds with the predictability of falling dominoes, but there's simple, infectious charm in Carey's portrayal of Billie Frank, an urban thrush who's discovered by ace club DJ Dice (Max Beesley) and rises to stadium-filling stardom in the post-disco New York of 1983. One hoary subplot works (Billie's quest for her long-lost mother) and another doesn't (Dice's debt to a threatening rival), while Carey plays a variant of herself with a gentle blend of vulnerability and good-girl fortitude. With a bright supporting cast and a stellar soundtrack, this movie didn't deserve the bad rap it got, and like her determined yet delicate character, Carey emerges unscathed despite considerable odds against her.
NEW YORK TIMES
All that ''Glitter'' is not gold.
By Lawrence Van Gelder
In fact, ''Glitter,'' the pop star Mariah Carey's feature film debut, is mostly dross, an unintentionally hilarious compendium of time-tested cinematic clichés that illustrates the chasm between hopeful imitation and successful duplication.
In the role of Billie Frank, Ms. Carey, filmed mostly to focus attention on her gleaming white smile and the amplitude of a bosom accented by tight or low-cut tops, is simply inadequate as an actress to the relatively undemanding emotional range of the story.
Directed by Vondie Curtis Hall from a screenplay by Kate Lanier, whose credits include the Tina Turner musical biography, ''What's Love Got To Do With It?,'' ''Glitter'' never approaches its objective: to be a heart-tugging tale of a rags-to-pop-royalty climb made poignant by love and loss.
Throughout a screening in a Times Square theater the other night, the audience erupted repeatedly into laughter at scenes intended to carry emotional weight, and the only sight that roused the onlookers to applause was the World Trade Center, visible in one of the many fleeting, swirling overheard views of New York City that seem intended to invest this listless flop with sorely needed glamour and excitement.
Musically, the only crowds excited by the singing in this film, for which Ms. Carey also takes a credit as the executive music director and a co-writer of several songs, are the extras who appear in its raves and in a climactic Madison Square Garden performance and who, presumably, were paid in some form for expressing their enthusiasm.
The best number in the film, the smoky, melancholy ''Lillie's Blue,'' written by Ms. Carey, James Harris III and Terry Lewis, is rendered by Valarie Pettiford while the extended opening credits are rolling. Ms. Pettiford portrays Billie's mother, Lillian Frank, whose singing performance in a nondescript bar sets the plot rolling when she summons her talented little girl (Isabel Gomes as the young Billie) to join her at the mike.
Later, at the door of his town house, Billie's dad, peeling off some $100 bills as conscience money, makes it clear that he wants no part of either Lillian or the angelic Billie, and when Lillian's careless smoking habits burn mother and child out of their home, Lillian has to surrender Billie to the welfare authorities. The separation is a traumatizing event that the audience is asked to believe colors Billie's life in the years to come.
Clutching her marmalade-color cat, Whiskers -- whose sudden reappearance later in the film, perhaps by then at the age of 200 in cat years, gives ''Glitter'' its biggest unintended laugh -- Billie enters the modern equivalent of a Dickensian orphanage.
The film then jumps to 1983, when a grown-up Billie, now portrayed by Ms. Carey, is singing backup with her childhood pals and current roommates, Louise (Da Brat) and Roxanne (Tia Texada), for a beauteous no-talent, Sylk (Padma Lakshmi), who is managed by the slick Timothy Walker (Terrence Howard).
No fool, Walker uses Billie's voice to ghost for Sylk's on a recording, but a shrewd young disc jockey and producer, Dice (Max Beesley), quickly spots the ruse.
Pursuing Billie, he promises: stick with me, and you'll be singing in Madison Square Garden.
Before she knows it, Billie has a contract with a big-time label and is having her image shaped by a couple of publicity agents and a video director who stop just short of suggesting that they were slipped into the script by Mel Brooks as a practical joke.
In addition, Billie, haunted by the loss of the mother she dreams of finding once more, overcomes her problems with trust and beds down with Dice.
But as Billie's career waxes, Dice's wanes; and unbeknownst to Billie, Timothy Walker wants $100,000 that Dice promised him for surrendering her contract as a backup singer.
Trouble of the sort that feeds the tabloids, where Ms. Carey's emotional difficulties have been recorded in recent months, is waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, in ''Glitter,'' Billie's plight evokes only derisive laughter.
''Glitter'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes some crude language appropriate to its characters and a sex scene, shown through slats, that made the audience laugh.
