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Sparkler

1999, Movie, NR, 86 mins

Sparkler: Review

SPARKLER
starstarstarstar
With its heart on its sleeve and not much on its mind, Darren Stein's uneven comedy floats along on a few good laughs and a certain goofy charm. After 15 years of marriage to trucker Flint (Don Harvey), good-natured Melba May (Park Overall) decides to call it a day, having caught Flint rocking their trailer home with her so-called best friend Hurricane (Sheila Tousey). Melba moves in with her mama Sherri (Grace Zabriskie), but her personal psychic friend tells her not to worry: The cards clearly show Queen Melba surrounded by three kings. That night at the local roadhouse, Melba does indeed meet three young men, though they're hardly royalty. Trent (Jamie Kennedy), Joel (Steven Petrarca) and Brad (Freddie Prinze Jr.) are waiting for AAA to rescue them from this godforsaken desert town: They were on their way from L.A. to Las Vegas when their BMW blew a tire. Melba chats them up, dances with Trent and Brad, and later discovers one of her earrings is missing. Figuring one of the boys has it, Melba hops in the car and follows them to Vegas. And that's not even half of it. Once the action shifts to the Strip, Stein manages to cram in even more characters into this busy little film, namely Melba's old high-school friend Dottie Delgato (Veronica Cartwright), a former cheerleader who now "does things" with her baton at a sleazy dive called The Crack. Flint, meanwhile, learns that Melba has won $1 million in a magazine sweepstakes, and wants her back. And then there are Melba's three kings... It's more an assemblage of characters than any organic whole, and it would be entirely too much for one movie if it weren't all so weightless. But Stein, writer-director of the equally insubstantial but nastier JAWBREAKER, takes pains to find the goodness in each of his paper dolls, and Overall has a natural sweetness about her that makes her too-good-to-be-true character almost believable. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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