Sparkle

A sparkle is as indefinable as the soul.

We can all spot it - someone who sparkles at a party. We all want it - that magic charisma. Can you think of a time when the air sparkled? You stop what you were thinking about. You hang on to every word. Maybe a smile is slowly captured at the corner of your lips? As you open your mouth to speak, does it sound like someone else speaking? Reverie in motion. Something inside just... sparkles!

If we could only bottle it and put it in a novel, a song, a play, a movie.

But Sparkle is no metaphysical examination of psychological attitude. It is a loving, light-hearted, low-effort comedy. And it sparkles.

Jill is an aspiring pub singer. She travels down to London with son Sam so they can both seek fame and fortune. Vince (Bob Hoskins) offers them a flat. Sam soon meets Sheila (Stockard Channing). Sheila is a powerful, vampish woman with her own PR company. Sam soon sleeps his way into her business. But their cosy arrangement hits problems when Sam falls for Kate (Amanda Ryan). And only later does he find out that Kate is Sheila's daughter.

Sparkle does at times feel like a re-run of The Graduate, updated to a modern London setting. But its warm charm and lack of any pretentiousness wins our hearts. Hoskins has one of his most lovable roles. Shaun Evans, as Sam, perfectly balances genuine sincerity against gold-digging acumen. They all exude spontaneity and a range of conflicting emotions are handled with finesse rather than grandstanding. It can, however, verge on being too deep after telling us we will just be entertained. "I know you're a bit shallow," Kate teases Sam, and so is this movie. But do we care? Dollops of sound political correctness fill subtexts for those who have naughtily forgotten to leave brains at the popcorn stand.

If there's a moral, maybe it's that even the most horrid-seeming family members aren't bad once you know things from their point of view. The inter-relatedness and mountains of coincidence are a bit overdone for believability. But, hey, there are enough giggles to distract us as we wade through a box of kleenex at high speed. Lesley Manville (as Jill) even does her own stage songs (the film title is from a poster where she makes a grand opening). This is shameless schmaltz - a genuine British feelgood romcom.

Director/writer Tom Hunsinger says "We use improvisation as a means of discovery. Actors, in character and in the heat of the moment, react to situations in ways that cannot necessarily be written or predicted or easily imagined. The process lends itself to a life-like, spontaneous quirky quality allowing us to write for the individual voice of each actor. Actor and character somehow knit together, resulting in performances that feel authentic and deeply felt." Not that I thought about that deeply about it at the time.

I actually laughed and cried till one of my contacts fell out.