It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I thought the plot was somewhat weak and the male character very unlikable. He seemed to be selfish throughout the film and remained so even in the end. I did not find myself cheering for a happy ending. The only character I did like was the struggling mother trying to make it as a singer, but that side story really had no parallels with the main plot. The rest of the story flowed in a very predictable manner and was quite unoriginal. After watching the movie, I felt like I had just wasted my time. I don't recommend watching it unless you have a profound love for British accents and that, that alone would satisfy your time in watching the movie.

I loved this film, managed to see it twice even though it is on very limited release in the UK (why??) Shaun Evans as Sam is totally believable as the charming ingenue who sleeps with the 'boss' in order to get a job. Amanda Ryan as Kate is less convincing and seems a little superficial (even though she tells Sam at one point that he is the one who is 'shallow'). Bob Hoskins and Lesley Manville provide the subplot superbly well, with a lot of humour. Anthony Head camps up his fun cameo as the gay lover. For me though it was Stockard Channing who stole the show - brilliant as Sheila, the hardened PR executive who, despite herself, finds herself falling in love with her young lover. The scene where Sam was finishing their affair, and then the scene at her brother's when she discovers who Sam is now sleeping with were both superb, with Stockard showing everything in her facial expressions and eyes. However, I did feel that at the end there was a scene missing - when everyone else was linked together happily, I felt there should have been a brief shot of Sheila - alone in her luxurious but unlived-in apartment, maybe reflecting on the loneliness of her life. I wish this film would come out on DVD, or at least be shown on TV so that I could record it, as I could definitely watch it more times.

Not as good as the writers'/directors' previous effort, LAWLESS HEART, despite an array of fine actors. I think the problem lies in the limited range of the male lead. Scenes between everyone else work well enough, but his cheeky-chap persona grates after a while. This is more of a criticism of the script than of the actor. When we finally see his vulnerable side, it's too late for the rom-com ending.The relationship between the characters also seems too conveniently close-knit to convince. Sure, by definition every work of fiction is artificial, a fabrication. There was a central idea in LAWLESS HEART - a bereavement - that bound the whole thing together. Here, unfortunately, the inter-connections seem worthier of a novel than a movie.Bob Hoskins is particularly endearing in SPARKLE, so fans of his should see the movie if they can. Otherwise, in spite of reliable performances from reliable performers, this feels like a rather half-hearted attempt at a feelgood movie.

It's a romantic comedy, but it's bland as hell as it just lacks story direction. There's many narrative problems -- for a start, Kate is presented as a strong, spiky lady at first (she's campaigning for the release of a wrongly imprisoned person as a sub plot), but then she's accepting of the main character sleeping with his mum and lying about it. Why? Because he gets her a toy dolphin. Not only is that pretty insulting to this films female audience, it's insulting to anybody who's ever had a meaningful relationship. For a romantic comedy to have those flaws is absolutely fatal, and it won't find a commercial audience because of that.Sam's character deserves a punch throughout the entire film - the audience won't like him due to his character journey (he tells his girlfriend he loves her, whilst lying about shagging her _mum_, in the space of 30 seconds). He goes from idiot, to idiot, in 90 minutes. We're defining lack of character journey in a motion picture, here.So, the male and female lead characters are idiots.Amusing, Bob Hoskins turns up near the end to smack Sam about - but the audience I saw it with laughed at the scene. I would have found it far more entertaining if Hoskins had beat him to a bloody pulp.Basically, if older men wrote and directed a romantic comedy, this would be what happens. And it is. Kate goes from being interesting to being a complete idiot of a character within the space of an hour, and it's a real shame. Kate's the worst representation of a protester I've seen in a movie pretty much ever, also, and it's something I found fairly insulting.Performance wise, Amanda Ryan is mostly great, Tony Head absolutely nails his part and Bob Hoskins is Bob Hoskins.The overall opinion I had from this is that they didn't want to another Love Actually, but at the same time they didn't have the balls to make anything meaningful in any other sense. Relationships are complicated and messy, people can be strong, individual and interesting; this is not that representation of life, love or people.