’Beyond the Lights’ can’t keep things bright

In Beyond the Lights, it’s not easy to figure out what writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood is driving at. Is she subtly satirizing the glitzy shallowness of a pop-music business where anybody who can carry a tune (and some who can’t) can have a shot at what passes these days for superstardom? Or does she want us to believe that the pleasant, amiable young woman at the center of her movie really is the wonder of the age?

Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who starred in the historical drama Belle in 2013, plays Noni, a young singer on a meteoric career path in the United States. We first meet Noni in her native England at the age of 10, when she’s played by India Jean-Jacques. Noni’s mother Macy (Minnie Driver) has entered her in a local talent contest, where the girl sings Nina Simone’s “Blackbird” a cappella. Macy is affronted and furious when her daughter comes in second to a perky little blonde tap dancer, and she orders Noni to leave her runner-up trophy in the parking lot so Macy can run over it with her car as they drive away.

“Do you want to be a runner-up,” she snarls, “or do you want to be a winner?”

Even in this early scene, it’s hard to figure out how we’re expected to respond. The fact is, as much as Prince-Bythewood tries to make that tap dancer look ridiculous, Noni’s lucky to have done as well as she did. Without the thrumming drumbeat that drives Nina Simone’s version of “Blackbird,” the song isn’t much of a showcase even for a great voice (like Simone’s). Does Prince-Bythewood agree with Macy that Noni was robbed? Or are we supposed to recoil at the spectacle of a stage mother who flies into a sore-loser rage when her little girl doesn’t triumph on her first time in the game?

Things clear up a bit in in the next scene, when the movie comes down on the side of recoiling at Mum. It’s years later, and Noni is a young woman now, making a name for herself in a series of videos with a rapper named Kid Culprit (Richard Colson Baker). As Noni and Culprit accept an award for their video titled (with an irony that may even be intentional) “Masterpiece,” the troubled look on her face goes unnoticed by everyone from her mother/manager on down. So it’s a surprise to everyone when Noni perches drunk on the balcony rail of her 15th-floor hotel suite in Beverly Hills, threatening to jump.

Noni is hauled back by Kaz (Nate Parker), the Los Angeles cop assigned to work security guarding the door of her suite. The suicide attempt is passed off as an accident. (“Never mix champagne, a hotel balcony and platform heels,” Noni chirps at a morning-after press conference.) Kaz, dubbed “Hero Cop” by the media, gets his 15 minutes of fame.

For us in the audience, those 15 minutes drag out to 116, and there’s the rub. Beyond the Lights stretches its tissue-thin story beyond the limits of its appealing young stars or the acting prowess of Minnie Driver or Danny Glover as Kaz’s father. It’s a movie that takes place in a universe where a mother cares less about her daughter’s cry for help than the rent-a-cop, and where that rent-a-cop can find true love with a star who, in the real world, wouldn’t even notice what color his uniform is. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is pretty and appealing, Nate Parker is hunky and appealing, Minnie Driver is intense, Danny Glover is solemn and dignified, and nothing is unexpected.

So, should we take Beyond the Lights at face value, even its mid-movie jaunt to Mexico where the young lovers enjoy a brief reprieve from the glare of the spotlight? Is Noni a genuine once-in-a-blue-moon talent—or is this a satirical comment on the pop-music hype machine? Personally, I’m as suspicious of a glossy, flashy movie about the gloss and flash of showbiz as I am of comic-book movies made by billion-dollar entertainment conglomerates about the evils of billion-dollar corporations.

Beyond the Lights is, in fact, a throwback to a movie so old that Gina Prince-Bythewood has almost certainly never seen or even heard of it: The Hard Way (1943), in which Ida Lupino was the iron-willed stage “mother” driving her modestly-talented kid sister (Joan Leslie) to stardom as a way out of poverty for them.