Please don't spend money on this.

Just what I expected

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Firstly, I don't know any other artist with the creative genius to record a soundtrack, write and sing most of the songs on it, come up with a movie idea, get the movie created, star in the movie, and still show face when the movie and soundtrack don't do well to support the nation through a tragedy.With that said, the movie wasn't bad if people tried to understand the concept and storyline. For what it was, the movie nailed every bit of what it was trying to convey. The reason the movie and soundtrack failed are due to the following:1. Jennifer Lopez and Tommy 2. Bad timing (synching up with 9/11) 3. Anti-Mariah initiatives at the turn of the centuryThis movie is a cult classic...maybe for all the wrong, unsubstantiated reasons....but a cult classic nonetheless.

My main criticism of this movie i that it is so slow. It takes ages for anything to happen and there are so many unnecessary shots of daily activities (entering a house, or walking down a street). I was sure the film was nearly over when I was just half way in, it is that drawn out. My second criticism is that the film cannot make up it's mind about what kind of story it wants to tell. In the beginning it sets things up like the mothers abandonment is going to be a central theme, but only touches on the subject on a few occasions. It also keeps skipping between the romance with Dice and Mariah's music career without much connection. Pick a theme and go with it!My third criticism is that this kind of rags to riches type story has been done so many times before. The struggling artist making it big, while at the same time dealing with personal problems, is a hard theme to pull off, and has been done much better by other film makers, with other artists. However, Glittr really is not as bad as many people claim, it's a pretty OK pop star success story, the only real problem is the boredom.

I was astonished. There is no movie or whatsoever ! The story I watched is one cheap rip-off from (A Star is Born) mixed with useless forgotten-from-the-start another story about the return of once-drunken mom to her long-lost daughter. It could be, from very very merciful angle, an anti-alcohol public service announcement, yet through the behavior of scriptwriters ! And if it is, as I heard, partly Mariah Carey's biography, then the tagline should be: In music she found her dream, her love, herself. Not cinema ! OK, I said to myself, so what about the songs? However as a fan of Mariah Carey's music and voice (like me), or not, you must hate these songs. The only track that worth hearing, Want You; a duet with (Eric Benét), is butchered in the background of one scene, even (Benét) got no respectable character during it !! Some of the songs were so 80s, and sorrowfully I mean it in the bad sense.The acting was extremely UGLY. (Max Beesley) must work in any other line than acting. (Mariah Carey) earned the Worst Actress award for that year fair and square. Speaking about ugliness, one of the most famous beauties back then, Mariah herself, looked really not beautiful for most of the time. Maybe that's the effect of this movie on her ! I hated it for making nothing to be watched, heard, or bearable. The release of it was postponed for 3 weeks when Mariah was hospitalized as a result of an "emotional and physical breakdown". Till now I believe that that happened due to undeclared reason which is watching this movie before releasing it (and I'm not kidding !).You read that it is listed among the 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book (The Official Razzie® Movie Guide). Now I beg to differ. Bad it is. Enjoyably? It isn't !

That means it's probably a good movie. And it is. Yes, the story is a familiar one. That's true for EVERY movie. Yes the cinematography sucks. That's true for a lot of movies. Sure, this is no Hard Day's Night. But it's got one of the best singers of all time singing some nice material. That ALONE makes Glitter worth watching. If you don't understand that, what the hell do you understand about movies? Three quarters of making a good movie is just putting a great performer in front of the camera. If you do that, you already have a watchable film, and Glitter has that, for sure. Mariah Carey's acting is amateurish, but it is genuine and emotional, and that's enough to hold the film's center. Carey's costars are all good, putting in performances that go well beyond perfunctory. They take poor material, in terms of writing, and they breath life into it. In particular, Max Beesley is a fine actor, sortof the poor man's Ewan McGregor, and there is a good chemistry between him and Carey. The themes of this movie are serious and the performers, if not the writers and producers, are serious about them; trying to find yourself and yet not lose yourself in the artistic struggle.Glitter's sin is that it could have been a much better movie. The production values are cheap and not in a good way. Writing and direction deflect Glitter's focus at key points in the development of characters and of the story. Carey herself has put her finger on the problem: it was apparently decided to shoot for a younger audience, as in a 12 year old audience, and the result was half-baked. It's a shame and a disappointment, but Glitter is still a movie with considerable promise that delivers enough to be worth watching, worth having. The amount of hate this movie gets is just grotesque. I'm sorry, but there are lots and lots of worse movies.