The film begins on a stage in a small smoky bar. Middle-aged Lillian Frank comes out to warble some bluesy pap. Standing at the bar is Billie, Lillian's adolescent, melancholy, very white daughter. Later on, Billie will be played by Mariah Carey, whom one may note is half-black. For now, young Billie is played by a girl who seems to have as much 'black' in her as Julie Andrews. Lillian continues to sing her very slow and plain love song as the credits roll very slowly and plainly. A common rule of thumb in screenwriting is that something intriguing should be written in the first ten pages (minutes) to 'hook' the audience. Personally, I'm hooked to my coffeemaker, as I can already tell it'll take a mountain of caffeine to get through this movie. In an effort to jazz up her performance, she calls attention to young Billie and asks her to come join her on stage. Billie is reluctant but eventually gives in. Billie's reluctance followed by a quickly acquiescing nature will be a running theme in this film, though it doesn't seem intentional or much less have a point. Anyhow, Billie gets on stage and belts out some notes obviously meant to impress the viewer. It's not bad, but just sounds like a typical little girl's voice.
The lame song finally ends and we next see Lillian, with melancholy Billie in tow, as she knocks on the door of Billie's white father. I don't know where Billie's white mother is, but… oh, that's right, Lillian is her mother, hahaha. Billie's father answers the door and Lillian asks for him to take some responsibility. It turns out Lillian was fired from her singing job at the bar; I'm a bit surprised that the bar's owner stayed awake long enough to give her the pink slip. Billie's asshole Dad hands Lillian some money and quickly shuts his door.
The credits continue to roll at a pace so slow I wonder if they'll be done in time for the end credits to begin. Back at their meager apartment, Lillian smokes while Billie alternately plays piano and looks melancholy. Early the next morning, Billie and Lillian have to escape the building as it has caught fire, apparently the result of dumbass Lillian having fallen asleep with a lit cigarette. Eventually Billie is taken away by a social worker, while I suppose Lillian has to go off to cigarette rehab or some such place. They have your typical sorrowful but mercifully short goodbye. We are now over eight minutes into the story and the credits are still appearing here and there. I don't know if this slow credit shit is some artistic statement or what but its goddamn annoying. This is like listening to a radio station where the idiot DJ blabbers through the whole first third of a song.
Young Billie is dropped off at a school or day care or orphanage or some other sort of place where kids get put to keep them from irritating adults for a while. The credits are still slowly rolling, which can only distract the audience from the story at this point. Idiots. Two young girls, Puerto Rican Roxanne and Black Louise, introduce themselves and ask Billie about her own ancestry. I only make note of Roxanne and Louise's heritage because that's how the screenwriter will present their characters throughout the story. All that's missing is a little Italian girl who loves meatballs and grows up to wear zebra-striped blouses. Billie states that she's mixed, meaning half-white and half-black; in real life, though, she looks half-Swedish and half-German. The three girls immediately become friends as Roxanne and Louise pet Billie's embarrassed cat. The cat looks to be in a rush to either find a litter box or fire his agent.
The story flashes forward to 1983 and we finally get to Director Vondie Curtis-Hall's credit, at the nine minute fifty-eight second mark of the movie. Anyway, in a big New York nightclub we see Billie, now an adult and part black. She dances alongside Roxanne and Louise, who remain Puerto Rican and black, respectively. Louise is played by annoying rapper Da Brat, who has since appeared in even more embarrassing forums, like Celebrity Fit Club and currently, Georgia Metro State Prison. The girls and the rest of the crowd dance to some electronic funk music that typically stinks and everyone wears leopard-print clothing. I guess it was "stinky pussy" night at the club. Sorry. Anyway, given the fashions seen later on, I wish they'd have stayed in the leopard outfits.
The three girls relax backstage, so I guess they are actually employed as dancers at the club, which is strange since they weren't actually doing anything the patrons weren't doing. Would, say, a restaurant hire people to eat alongside its customers? Into the dressing room walks Terrence Howard, reminding me of his desperate, struggling days as an actor. As Timothy the agent/producer, Howard is well-dressed, which lets me know he'll do something mean in the story, which is a rule in films of this quality. For now though, he offers the girls work as backup dancers for his protégé Sylk. Sylk is played by famous model-turned Top Chef Judge Padma Lakshmi. Padma would also achieve some notoriety a few years later for marrying famous author Salman Rushdie. I guess they looked beyond their wide age discrepancy and focused on their commonalities: he wrote a book that offended scores of Muslims and she appeared in this movie that offended scores of brain-owners.
Billie is hesitant to jump at the offer of course, as she wants to achieve success on her own. The girls leave the club but fter about six seconds of shrill pleading from her friends, Billie unsurprisingly changes her mind, rendering the past minute of the film pointless… I mean, particularly pointless. Next, the girls appear in the recording studio along with Sylk. Intrigued by Billie's voice, Timothy asks her to sing a line from Sylk's song. Billie does this and impresses Timothy, though its obvious Mariah was lip-synching here. Why she couldn't have just sung live during filming I have no idea; maybe the whole record industry is an even bigger sham than I thought. Timothy then asks the engineer to turn down Sylk's voice and raise Billie's voice on the track being recorded. The scene ends but not before I notice Roxanne holding a skinny, circa-2001 shaped 20 ounce plastic bottle of Coke, which I'm sure were not available back in '83.
