Film

Sparkle

Cert: 15

Description: Several notches above your average romantic comedy, this follows a chancer (Shaun Evans) and his showy mum (Lesley Manville) to London, where they rapidly get involved with a web of urban types (including Bob Hoskins and Stockard Channing). Warm and smart but fairly straightforward.

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Dir: Tom Hunsinger, Neil Hunter.

Cast: Shaun Evans, Amanda Ryan, Stockard Channing, Anthony Head

Country: UK.

Year: 2007.

Duration: 104mins

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By Derek Malcolm
16 Aug 2007

Written and directed by Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger, this British romantic comedy is an emotional mess all round. Shaun Evans is a young Liverpudlian on the make who arrives in London with his mother (Lesley Manville), gets a job in PR, beds the boss (Stockard Channing), then deserts her for his true love: her disaffected daughter (Amanda Ryan). Mum, meanwhile, a would-be singer, is courted by Bob Hoskins's landlord.

Sparkle is about 10 minutes too long and directed without much fluency, rather like a homegrown movie of the Fifties. However, the acting saves it.

Evans manages charm as well as shallow ambition and Channing shows a vulnerability that is palpably real as the older woman. You can't complain about anyone in the cast. But a little more cinematic flair might have made Sparkle live up to its title better.