Кристина агилера

It's bad, but not a "Showgirls"-grade campfest; it offers plenty of cheesecake, but it might be too gay-friendly to titillate the Maxim crowd; its original music certainly won't win over musical lovers seeking echoes of "Chicago."

The movie works best for fans of Christina Aguilera, who in her movie-acting debut proves mediocre - don't look for her to follow co-star Cher's lead into a winning performance like "Moonstruck," though at least she's better than Britney Spears. But she does get to growl out some crowd-pleasingly commercial tunes while dressed in lingerie fashioned from pearls and ostrich feathers.

Aguilera's small-town girl stumbles wide-eyed from one cliché to the next while seeking stardom in Los Angeles, and the singer doesn't have enough charisma to sell the thin plot. That's fine when she's paired with vapid Eric Dane, the real-estate mogul looking to buy her love, but it's problematic when she's onscreen with Stanley Tucci, whose slumming performance as a nightclub costumer would make Bob Fosse smile and is good enough that co-stars should resent it. (Tucci earns the movie's two biggest laughs with as little effort as it takes to brush a sequin from a lapel.)