Poor Billie Frank! She's a young kid with an alcoholic single mother who likes to take her daughter along to bars while she sings. Billie's father has distanced himself from her, and throwing a few bills at her mother is as close as he ever gets to his daughter. When circumstances force Billie to lose touch with her mother for good, she's sent to a foster home. There she meets two good friends and a love for music that stays with her as she grows up. Years later, as an adult twenty-something woman, Billie (Mariah Carey) and her friends Louise (Da Brat) & Roxanne (Tia Texada) have to make ends meet by performing in clubs or being back-up singers to the untalented lead singer of their manager Timothy Walker (Terrence Howard, who seems to be channeling LL Cool J with his performance and flashy wardrobe).

Walker's so impressed by Billie's voice that, without telling anyone (or giving Billie her due pay or recognition), he mixes her voice as the lead vocal of the song being recorded at the music studio. Needless to say, the song is a hit wherever it's played, including a '54'-like happening nightclub where lead DJ Julian 'Dice' Black (Max Beesley) quickly sees in Billie the type of raw talent that he can exploit to the mutual benefit of both of their careers. After promising to pay $100,000 to Tim Walker so he can release Billie and her friends from their contract with him, Julian introduces Billie to the heads of CMZ Records. Would you believe that, as they work together, Billie and Julian begin to madly fall in love with each other? And would you believe that, upon hearing an audio cassette with Billie's songs, the record company hands Billie and Julian a contract to produce music?

The rest of the plot of "Glitter", as directed by actor-turned-director Vondie Curtis-Hall and co-written by Cheryl L. West & Late Lanier, is a non-stop parade of cliche' situations that have been seen a million times before in movies, TV shows and even children cartoons about talented nobodies being discovered by showbiz executives. The strained friendship between Billie and her girlfriends when Julian's love sweeps her off her feet? Check. The pressure from record company executives to strip Billie bare of her dignity by making her look like a slut to appeal to a wider public? An expensive shopping spree with her girlfriends when Billie gets a credit card? Double check. Flirting with a potentially better-suited mate when Billie meets a talented singer/songwriter named Rafael (Eric Benet) during an awards ceremony? Check. Billie's friends taking her back when she and Julian have a break-up? Check. Plenty of fast-paced, quickly-edited, fly-by shots on New York City to capture the beat of this great town? Check, check, check... ad infinitum!

"Glitter" utterly fails to capture the magic of other rags-to-riches motion picture fables like "Rocky" or "The Karate Kid". Blame partially goes to director Curtis-Hall, who does a poor job of portraying the character of Billie Frank as a fighter or an underdog worth rooting for or giving a damn about. Carey, whose acting isn't as terrible or unwatchable as you might think (she's no Sofia Coppola), isn't shown struggling or even caring that much for being recognized and making it big in the music industry. How can a movie with a lead character that has everything thrown at her feet (fame, fortune, love, affection, media exposure, etc.) without much struggle connect with the average man/woman that has to struggle everyday just to get by? Not even the handful of scenes involving Billie's mother (an underutilized Valerie Pettiford) at the beginning and end of "Glitter" make the emotional connection between the two characters seem believable at the most basic of human emotions: mother-daughter love.

The disconnect between "Glitter's" make-believe world and reality isn't so insulting or insipid if the viewer takes this flick for what it is: the type of schmaltzy and unreal Hollywood spectacle in which people are shown dancing in the streets when a song by the movie's lead character is played on the radio, which makes the traffic come to a halt in the middle of a busy NYC street (pathetic!). It isn't even a 'so bad it's good' movie worth mocking or even wasting too many brain cells thinking about, but "Glitter's" debacle was bad-enough for Carey's record company to pay-off her contract to make the woman go away for $20+ million dollars. Did you see that ear-to-ear smile Carey had when she sang the National Anthem at the Patriots-Rams Superbowl game in New Orleans last week? You'd be smiling too, if you got a multi-million dollar payoff to go away after laying a critical/commercial egg the likes of which Hollywood and the record industry rarely (if ever) forget.