Singer Mariah Carey has taken a break from her pop activities to act in a new movie called "Push," set for a debut this past weekend at Sundance Film Festival which took place in Park City, Utah.
The real star of the movie is an unknown actress from Harlem, Gabourney Sidibe, who plays the role of an obese and overburdened 16-year-old named "Precious" Jones. As a result of the constant abuse by her father, the teenager becomes pregnant twice and is beaten by her mother.
In this movie, Mariah Carey plays a totally different role far more serious than that she had to perform in 2001 as a singer in the semi-autobiographical “Glitter,” which only made $5.3-million at global box offices and was unfavorably criticized. Now, the 38-year-old artist is embodying a character called Mrs. Weiss, a welfare case worker with stringy hair and no nonsense attitude, who is looking after a teen-mum coping with her abusive incestuous childhood.
About her character, Mariah stated for Contactmusic that Mrs.Weiss is in a way like the audience, representing all the people who do not know anybody in such a dramatic situation as that described in the movie.
However, “Push” is based on a novel bearing the same title written by New York writer Sapphire, whose given name is Ramona Lofton. The book turned out to be quite controversial as it hit retail stores in 1996 especially due to the fact that the incest was graphically described and in the end made its way to the New York Times Bestseller list.
The film is also influenced by the best-selling novel and is directed by Lee Daniels who produced "Monster's Ball," as well, which earned Halle Berry a best actress Oscar.
In spite of the dramatic and worrying idea of the movie, it also has several comic scenes that made the audience laugh, especially the surrealistic dreams that the lead character, Precious, creates to escape her misery. The best of all seemed to be the one in which she dreams that she and her mother have been transported into a Sophia Loren film on television and her mom is cursing at her in Italian.
But as a big surprise, you will discover while watching the movie that Mariah Carey is not the only singer to have won a Grammy award and part of the cast. The famous rock star, Lenny Kravitz plays a small role as a nurse's aide who helps Precious deliver her second child.
For the moment, “Push” does not seem to fight against all odds as Mariah would say in one of her songs, but on the contrary, early reviews turned out to be positive. The movie was considered to be “courageous and uncompromising.”
Well....what can we say now? We can only wish the best of luck for Mariah and her new actress wannabe attempt. As for Lenny Kravitz, what’s the big idea casting him such an insignificant role? Shame, shame, shame! People want to see more of the rock legend therefore we hope that he considers better an acting career.
