Sparkle is a 1976 American musical drama film directed by Sam O'Steen and released by Warner Bros. Pictures.

With a plot inspired by the history of the Supremes, Sparkle is a period film set in Harlem, New York, during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

It presents the story of a musical girl group that ends up breaking apart due to individual issues each member faces.

This film not only "recreates the magic of a special period in American history, but it explores the effect of Harlem's musical and social culture on the rest of the world," as well as the linkages to black power.

[1] The film stars Irene Cara, Philip Michael Thomas, Lonette McKee, Dwan Smith, Mary Alice, Dorian Harewood, and Tony King.

Lonne Elder, writer of the Academy Award nominated screenplay for Sounder drafted Sparkle, which Joel Schumacher edited to make a 200-page basis for the film that became his screenwriting debut.

The late 1960s to early 1970s consisted of soul music which tied in with historical macro events such as: Middle Civil Rights Movement, Great Society, Vietnam War, and Black Power.

Some of these artists include Earth Wind and Fire, Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelic, Kool & The Gang, Labelle, and Chaka Khan.

While analyzing gender and sexuality, the black female protagonists in this film can easily be compared to the women in Cleopatra Jones and Coffy.

Darlene Clark Hine's A Shining Thread of Hope brought up the fact that after women joined the Black Power movements, men felt less of themselves, as they could not protect and support their families as forcefully.

And yet, women in these organizations actually managed to make greater progress in some ways than they had in more traditional civil rights groups" (298).

Complicating this reasoning is the fact that Satin had previously brutalized a woman ("Taylor") he'd been seeing who posed no enduring threat to his masculinity.

At one point, Jones even addresses black male sexuality and how they assume the role of a white man to achieve power over women.

[citation needed] The film received mostly negative reviews from critics, currently holding a 17% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

[13] Variety stated that "somewhere along the line, there was made a decision to cheat—to attempt an honest ghetto drama, but not enough to really go all the way into the characters; to keep the exploitative elements of casual dope and sex, but jump ahead to the convenient tragic results which can be seen on any TV feature; to explore the seedier side of the music business, but not enough to ever get beyond the titillations of pulp storytelling.

[14] Dave Kehr stated that the film was "[a] hackneyed, ho-hum 1976 feature about a black girl group, clearly modeled on the Supremes."

FilmFour stated that "[as] drab as it is, Sparkle's worth renting for Lonette McKee's performance and the cast renditions of Mayfield's songs.

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave it a mixed two-and-a-half star review, saying that its music was "excellent, but not of the period", that "its social protest theme is 10 years ahead of its time", and that the plot was loaded with clichés, but praising the chemistry between McKee and Cara, and preferring it over that of Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams in Mahogany from the year before.

[15] However, The Onion's AV Club gave it a B− grade, calling it "a rags-to-riches story that doesn't miss a stop along the well-trod ghetto-to-musical-charts path, but makes its journey with tuneful conviction."

Its potentials are boundless, and yet, because of a screenplay by Joel Schumacher that is much too crowded with themes, moods and characters that never fully develop beyond the point of mediocrity, we eventually end up with a highly polished piece of cut glass....The acting is some of the most professional I’ve seen in films that purport an all-Black cast.

Lonetta McGee (Sister) has a strong screen presence that is hard to ignore and Irene Cara (Sparkle) portrays the ingenue with more conviction than this film can handle.

[17] It was viewed as a rather atypical Blaxploitation film for the day, illustrating "that based on the nature, dignity, interests and ideals of man even blacks from the ghetto are capable of self-fulfillment and ethical conduct without recourse to supernaturalism; in this case the super-stud, super-chick theory that is so common in the movies made primarily for the black movie goers today.

"[17] Sparkle went on to become a cult classic among African-American audiences, and was remade in 2012 as a TriStar Pictures release starring Jordin Sparks and Whitney Houston.