if you think about it, most blaxplotation films of the '70's were filmed, scripted and acted just like this. look at "shaft", "coffy", "superfly", "five on the black hand side", "blacula", "abby", etc.
that's just the way it was back then. black cinema has evolved tremendously since then. just like the "race" films of the '30's and '40's.
the 70's movies about black life were mostly written and directed by whites, just like the t.v. shows back then. some had behind the scenes black participation and others did not. look at "good times", "the jeffersons", "charlie & company", "barefoot in the park", "that's my mama" just to name a few, while shows like: "the bill cosby show" ('70's), "what's happening", "sanford & son" and "the cosby show" had lead black writers to give the shows more authenticity. The mini-series "roots" and it's sequel were exceptions but it's production team was indeed predominately wite.
so, i wouldn't be too harse on "sparkle", because besides "lady sings the blues", "sounder", "the learning tree" and "claudine", black cinema was extremely slim pickins back then.
thank god for the new breed of writers, directors and producers who give up top quality now-a-days.
just my two cents......
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rejavanation
14 years ago
I saw Sparkle when I was a teenager. The reviews of this movie are not considering the time and period in which the film was made. Sparkle wasn't an blaxploitation film and it wasn't in the genre of those others mentioned. If you're going to compare Sparkle to a movie, compare it to its contemporaries, Cooley High and Monkey Hustle.
As for the story, as a young black girl, I had never seen anyone as beautiful as Vonetta McGee nor a Black man as handsome as Philip Michael Thomas. He was my generations Billy Dee Williams. Any black child growing up in an urban neighborhood could relate to this story. A matriarch working hard to raise a family of girls and sisters who want a bigger dream. I idolize my older sister as did Irene Cara in this film. Even with all her bad choices, she loved her and put her on a pedestal. This wasn't a story filled with two dimensional characters. It spoke to a lot of kids who lived in the era in which it was released.
Of course, if you view it now it will seem campy. It's not Dream Girls because BEFORE Dream Girls there was Sparkle. The soundtrack alone was enough to make this movie stand out. Aretha Franklin tore up every song she sang in this movie.
I'm not ashamed of a movie that spoke to the kids in my generation. We didn't have very many movies that starred black people back then. Before you spit on the past, you should thank those pioneers who paved the way for the films we have today.
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b-touch
12 years ago
-Aretha Franklin is heard noplace i nthis movie. Her versions of the songs were recorded long after the movie was completed.
-Considering the time & period the film was made in? Sparkle was made in 1975 (and held over until the following April), the year films like Jaws & Dog Day Afternoon were released. So it isn't as if people didn't know how to make great films that year. Plus, 1975 was also the year the equally low-budget Cooley High was released. And Cooley High is a better film than Sparkle could ever dream of.
The story is very much filled with two- (and one-) dimensional characters, all of whom flowed forth from the pen of Sparkle's creator, Joel Schumacher (the very same Joel Schumacher who would torpedo the Batman franchise in the 1990s). If the film meant a lot to you growing up, that's fine, but I can statistically verify that you had _plenty_ of movies that starred black people in the mid-1970s (the depths of the blaxploitation movement). Granted, many of them weren't very good (Sparkle included), but they were there.
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