This rag to riches music industry drama starts off in a grubby Town Hall in Brixton one of London’s rougher areas where Nona a frizzy-haired schoolgirl is stunning the audience at this Talent Show with her capella rendition of Nina Simone’s classic song Blackbird. She wins second place which immediately enrages her potty-mouthed pushy stage mother who insists that Nona should never ever settle for anything less than being a winner and that she should smash the trophy up.
The action then flashes forward to the present time and a grown-up Noni has been transformed into looking every part an MTV star complete with a purple weave and wearing skimpy revealing clothes that any stripper would revel in. Noni’s debut album is still yet to be released but she has already had several hits with her white hip-hop star boyfriend and they are about to perform together live on the latest Awards Show.
It looks like Noni has everything going for her, but the moment she is alone in her palatial penthouse hotel suite, Noni heads for the balcony and precarious dangles on the edge. Fortunately Kaz a young earnest policeman who has been assigned to guard her room, intervenes and pulls her back to safety. Their eyes meet for the briefest of moments before Mother quickly moves in to handle the damage control as word has leaked out of Noni’s behaviour. Kaz is therefore pressured into towing the official line that the young singer had merely slipped and that all is right with the world.
Noni’s mother is in denial about her daughters unhappiness and still pulls all the strings and wants her to keep dating the totally unsuitable hip-hop boyfriend even when it becomes clear that hot handsome Kaz has taken a shine to the young singer too. The policeman on the other hand is being groomed by his father to pursue a career in local politics where having a scantly clad pop singer on his arm just wouldn’t be a good fit.
When Noni and Kaz manage to give her handlers and the paparazzi the slip, they dine out on fast-food fried chicken on a very chaste date but its obvious that they have both got the hots for each other. When on a later date she seduces the blindfold cop who has a fear of flying on a private plane you realise that these two are not kids after all.
Full of foot tapping very raucous hit-sounding music this entertaining but very slight romance is lifted to a higher level than one would normally expect because of the outstanding breakthrough powerhouse performance of Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Noni. We knew from her starring role in ‘Belle’ that this beautiful woman is a very talented actress, but little did we expect that she could out Rhianna Rhianna.
Credit also to Nat Parker who played Kaz, and also in what I initially thought was bizarre casting, but by the final scene, I actually thought that Minnie Driver made a perfect mother.
If MTV is your favorite channel then you will love this movie, but even if it’s not, you can still appreciate that you are witnessing a rising star in the making.
