I wanted to but couldn't!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I just can not explain with words how much i adore this movie, like for real is my absolutely favourite one! People tend to underestimate it but it's sooo good! My opinion is that every romantic person should see this movie!!! 10/10

At one point in this cold mess of a movie, Noni's mother, played by Minnie, shouts, "You're a bloody cliché!" Bingo, Minnie, Noni, Gugu et al., you're ALL bloody clichés. There's the spoiled little pop star who has absofreakinlutely everything a girl could want, except true love and the will to live. There's the harridanish stage mom whose nastiness translates to excellent negotiating skills with music industry execs. There's the impossibly dull love interest - a cop who aspires to be a city councilman, just writing that made me yawn. What made it a little bit interesting for me was the way the black characters were all good and the white characters were all either evil or incompetent. Me, I'm Italian; my grandparents came to the USA 60 years after the American Civil War ended, so you guys fight it out amongst yourselves, please. It was just nice to see the caucasians get theirs for a change.Btw, the music doesn't even try to be good.

Review: This is another one of those movies which had a great trailer but it turned out to be pretty disappointing. I thought that it was going to be like the hit series, the Empire but it turned out to be about a worldwide, music superstar who is struggling to fame and all of the attention from the media. With her new album due to come out soon, Noni craves normality in her life but her mum and her record company end up pushing her to the edge, which leads to her trying to commit suicide. At that moment, the cop that was protecting her, Kaz, comes to her rescue and the news hits the tabloids which puts there relationship under the microscope. After a while, the pressure becomes a bit too much for the couple, so they escape to Mexico were they deeply fall in love with each other, against Kaz's dad and Noni's mums wishes. It isn't long before Noni is spotted in Mexico so she has to return to her demanding pop career. By this time, she has turned a corner in her personal life and she seeks more control in her music career. Her new boyfriend thinks it's a bad idea for her to return to that life because he saw how much it was destroying her. From there the movie seemed like it was going round and round in circles and I was hoping for a major twist or something interesting to happen. The main character, Noni, just seemed like a spoilt brat who needed some decent guidance. The cop also seemed quite dull and easily influenced by his father so the characters didn't help this predictable storyline. Basically, it reminded a lot of the Bodyguard which was a much better movie because Whitney was actually a true superstar. I liked the fact that the director was showing the life of a star through there eyes, but the storyline dried up after a while and it became quite boring. Watchable but nothing that amazing!Round-Up: I wasn't that impressed with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who played Noni, because I failed to have an emotional connection to her character. Thats not totally to blame on her performance because she did try to make her character seem real but the film seemed to have skipped the important parts of her career, like her road to stardom. At 32, she has starred in movies like Jupiter Ascending, Odd Thomas, Straightheads and Larry Crowne but I doubt that people will remember her in any of those movies! She played the lead in Belle pretty well and she has a role in the upcoming Beauty and the Beast movie so she might hit her peak around then. Nate Parker has made about 20 movies in his career which started in 2005 in Cruel World. He has made appearances in Non-Stop, Pride, The Great Debaters, Red Tails, Arbitage and Ain't Them Bodies Saints and at 35 years old, I'm sure that were going to see him more on the big screen. The director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, also directed the Secret Life Of Bees, which I quite enjoyed, Love & Basketball and a couple of episodes of the Bernie Mac Show and Everybody Hates Chris so she hasn't had loads of experience behind the camera. She did do quite a good job with this movie but I did find the storyline sketchy and uninteresting after a while.Budget: $7million Worldwide Gross: $15millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their drama/romances about a music superstar who struggles with fame and media attention, until she falls in love with her bodyguard which changes her life. 4/10

Maybe I need to watch this movie again. Nice visuals decent acting from the leads but so formulaic in it's composition that it never grabbed me. Maybe it's just not my kind of movie, the best parts for me were the very beginning and end. The beginning gave me hope for more substance, but it jumped too fast to the future and the dialogue was clichéd and predictable. I was touched by her final song in which she was free to express her new found sense of self and freedom. Everything in between was eye candy and for me at least not a lot of chemistry between the leads. I can surprise myself when I'm at odds with the others who watched and found something different, but I trust my own judgment as my own vision. That's my 2 cents, nice movie but didn't elicit or bring out much in the way of feeling for me. Hey no one is right or wrong but I turned it off 20 minutes before the end, the predictability was embarrassing. Watched her final performance this morning and was worth it, but see above, as a whole just didn't work, "for me".