Somehow, miraculously, the predictable saga skirts cliché.
BEYOND THE LIGHTS MOVIE
Though it sounds like a cross between The Bodyguard and the plot of a contemporary romance novel, this movie has more substantive ideas on its mind. The celebratory night culminates in a desperate act.Įnter handsome policeman Kaz (Nate Parker), who's assigned as Noni's security detail. Underneath all the posing, she's deeply unhappy. But the pressures are eating away at Noni. She wins a Billboard Music Award, and her transformation from quiet biracial girl to exotic recording star seems complete. She's a glamorous star, a la Rihanna or Nicki Minaj, singing duets with a famous hip-hop artist and wearing scanty stripper-style gear, gobs of makeup and purple hair extensions. "Do you want to be a runner-up, or do you want to be a winner?" she asks her young daughter as they get into their beat-up station wagon.įlash-forward about a dozen years and Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) has chucked the glasses and the natural curly hair. She gets second place and her ambitious stage mother (Minnie Driver) orders her to toss the trophy.
The story opens with 10-year-old Noni (India Jean-Jacques), a shy, bespectacled girl singing a moving a cappella version of Nina Simone's Blackbird at a talent contest in her native London.
While melodramatic in the vein of A Star Is Born, Beyond the Lights is also a wise and open-hearted look at the price of fame upon personal identity.Ī romantic drama set amid the music industry (*** out of four rated PG-13 opens Friday nationwide), it also provides a powerful message to girls and young women not to conform to hypersexualized hip-hop images.
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