Sparkle - [DVD]

From the accomplished singing to the eye-catching apparel, Salim Akil's Motor City remake of the Harlem melodrama has a charm and style all its own (his wife, Girlfriends creator Mara Brock Akil, cowrote the screenplay). With production by T.D. Jakes and music supervision by R. Kelly, it's an engaging mix of the sacred and the profane. American Idol winner Jordin Sparks puts her powerful pipes to work as Sparkle, a late-'60s songwriter who forms a Supremes-style trio with her siblings, Sister (British-born Carmen Ejogo) and Dee (Gossip Girl's Tika Sumpter, stealing every scene she's in). Raised by their devout mother, Emma (producer Whitney Houston in her final film role), they attract good-guy manager Stix (Derek Luke), who falls for the demure Sparkle, and bad-boy standup comedian Satin (Mike Epps), who falls for the glamorous Sister. At first, Sister dates humble admirer Levi (Omari Hardwick), but the flashier Satin offers an irresistibly glittering lifestyle. Soon, she's doing lines and daubing makeup on her bruised face, endangering the group's chance at a record contract--let alone her life (Ray's Curtis Armstrong plays a major-label executive). Comparisons to Dreamgirls, which featured another Idol alum, will be inevitable, but the original 1976 Sparkle came first. If Sparks is the least experienced actor in the cast, she keeps her character relatable, an essential quality for a sidekick-to-headliner narrative, and Houston ably blends dramatic disappointment with comic outrage--plus, a showstopping rendition of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow"--making her untimely passing all the more tragic. --Kathleen C. Fennessy