The year is 1958 and the place is Harlem, where Sparkle Williams (Irene Cara) lives with her mother and sisters. One of her sisters, Sister (Lonette McKee), is the wild one of the three but Sparkle remains prim and pure, shocked that local boy Stix (Philip Michael Thomas) should want to kiss her. Yet she will stay by Stix, as he has ambitions to break into the music business and plans to use the Williams girls to help him. However, the road to success will be a rocky one, and not everyone will make it to the top - some barely make it to the middle...
Once you get past the silly names (have you ever met anyone called "Sister"?) there's touching drama with this film, which some may be surprised to learn was scripted by future (and widely castigated) director Joel Schumacher, from producer Howard Rosenman's story. It may hit plenty of clichés on the way to its grand finale (even including a breakup in the rain), but perhaps these plot points have become stereotypical because they're rooted in truth, and there's a deeply felt sorrow for the harsh life that the sisters and Stix swap for another life that is not entirely unlike the one they hoped to be leaving behind.
At first, Stix' big idea is to be part of a singing quintet, with him writing the songs, but things don't work out the way he intended. It has to be said he displays great talent as a songwriter, which mainly down to none other than Curtis Mayfield being the musical director on the film and writing the higher percentage of the songs the cast perform. We see the hopefuls at an amateur night to establish themselves, and they certainly do better than the previous woman who is actually pulled off the stage with a large hooked stick, something I thought only happened for variety show gags.
After the drawback of being introduced as "The Farts" by the M.C. (they're actually called The Hearts), they proceed to wow the crowd as you might expect, but they're not going to get an easy time of it. One member drops out, and Stix decides to stay in the background while writing what he hopes will be hits for his new girl trio. Unfortunately, while they make progress, the strain begins to tell and Sister hooks up with a gangster boyfriend called Satin (Tony King) who beats her regularly and addicts her to hard drugs.
Although Sister seemed like the main attraction, being the best looking and taking the frontwoman role, her downward spiral takes its toll and the film does tend to revel in the dark side of showbiz. Eventually, the group splits without making a huge impact, so where does that leave Sparkle? Stix has a crisis of confidence, and by the time he returns promising to make her a star with his material, she's disillusioned and forcing him away. As a result of all this misery, the highs are fairly muted and the corruption and crushing disappointment we've seen are enough to put anyone off their dreams of stardom. Nevertheless, Sparkle does make it, and with Mayfield's songs bringing out the characters' emotions this is an above average rendition of a familiar tale.
