Beware of Dog (of a Movie)
You know you're in for a terrible flick when the girl behind the counter at the video store asks, "do you really want to rent this?" But, given that warning, I still had no idea that a movie could be as awful as Mariah Carey's Glitter. Not content to be a run of the mill piece of junk, Glitter is like some cinematic Sir Edmund Hillary on a frenzied quest for the highest peak of Mt. Bad.

Predictably Cliché
The screenplay, presumably written in crayon, would make Joe Eszhertas weep. The rags to riches story starts out with Billie (Mariah) being given up to social services after her chain smoking, lounge singing junkie of a mother falls asleep with a lit Camel and burns the house down. After a tearful farewell, Billie is hauled off to an orphanage where she makes friends with two other little scamps. The story picks up about 10 years later where Billie is now a dancer with big dreams of being a singer. The only other people in her life are her two friends from the orphanage which immediately raises the question: how much sympathy can we muster from someone so limited in their social skills that they can only make two friends over the course of a decade? The rest of the chips predictably fall into place and the movie ends 90 painful minutes later with Billie achieving fame and being reunited with her mother. Throughout the story, Billie finds love, loses love, and has trouble adjusting to the music industry. On the whole, it's about as exiting as an infomercial for steak knives.

All the clichés are present, from her two kooky and kerraazy friends to the fawning publicity agent to the faceless record company goons who try to control her career. But the oddest thing is that there's never any real challenge or adversity that Mariah has to face. It's strange, but everything that she achieves is essentially given to her with very little work on her part. Someone else spots her at a club, someone else produces her album, someone else gets the album picked up by a major label, someone else guides her through the video-making process. Aren't rags to riches stories supposed to be about perseverance in the face of adversity? Here, there's no Horatio Alger inventiveness, no sense of divine providence, no idea of karma, nothing. Just Mariah getting everything handed to her on a silver platter. The amount of emotion that the movie generates could be placed in the eye of a needle, still leaving room for a few strands of thread.

Unshockingly Bad Acting
If the story isn't bad enough, the acting is even worse. The only conclusion I can reach is that it was a conscious decision made in order to distract people from the script. Mariah's idea of acting consists of opening her eyes as wide as she can and delivering her lines with an emotion and depth usually only heard during dinnertime telemarketing calls. The rest of the cast is just as bad if not worse. I mean, we know that Mariah got the part because of who she is, but what about the others? Were there even auditions or did someone randomly pick people out of league night at the local bowling alley and give them parts? I've seen better acting on public access.

Glitter is simply not worth seeing. Not even to impress your buddies or to cash in on irony points. Without a doubt, it's the worst movie I've ever seen, making Dirty Work look like Lawrence of Arabia. Just stay away. And if people mention it to you, pretend it doesn't exist.