Dreamgirls
Review by Peter T. Chattaway | posted 12/25/2006
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Should someone win a best actor or best actress award for singing? That, more or less, is the question that we will all be dealing with for the next two months, as Dreamgirls coasts into theaters on a wave of Oscar hype that likely won't end until the last golden statuette is handed out at the end of February.
The film, adapted by writer-director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Kinsey) from the 1981 Broadway musical by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen, rushes so quickly from one song to the next—almost all of which are performed in a recording studio or before an audience—that it's almost a concert movie, and the "dramatic" bits that come between the songs are little more than padding or connective tissue.
Beyonce Knowles as Deena, Anika Noni Rose as Lorrell, and Jennifer Hudson as Effie
There may be a certain wisdom to this approach, inasmuch as audiences are all too familiar with the clichés of the rock 'n' roll biopic genre, and the filmmakers know that what we really want is music, music, music. And so the film begins at an amateur talent show, where the Dreamettes—Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles), Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) and sassy, spunky lead singer Effie White (Jennifer Hudson)—get their first big break. One song flows into the next, rehearsals become stage performances, and before we know it, an entire tour has passed us by.
The Dreamettes almost miss their chance to perform at the talent show because they showed up late, but salvation comes in the form of Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx), a Cadillac salesman with ambitions of becoming a music producer. Lurking in the shadows and looking for opportunities to seize, he intervenes on the girls' behalf and not only helps them get onstage, but gets them a gig as back-up singers for Jimmy "Thunder" Early (Eddie Murphy), an R&B star modelled on the likes of James Brown, Otis Redding and Little Richard—though Jimmy claims they stole his gimmicks!
Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx), the Dreams' manager, has a word with Effie
For the first hour or so, you could be forgiven for missing the fact that Dreamgirls is an actual musical, and not just a drama about musicians; virtually every song is performed on a stage of some sort, and the one fleeting exception—as Curtis sings a line or two from "Steppin' to the Bad Side" while raising the money with which to bribe deejays into playing Jimmy's music—is quickly forgotten, as we cut to another concert and Jimmy keeps the song going for another minute or two.
It isn't until almost the exact middle of the film that a character breaks into song in the middle of a dramatic scene, and the effect is somewhat jarring. What's more, when these characters break into song, there is often nothing particularly interesting or creative about the lyrics; it is as though the composers took simple dialogue and tried to jazz it up with music—but instead of adding something to the scene, the music just underscores how banal the words in those scenes were to begin with.
Eddie Murphy as James 'Thunder' Early
Both times I have seen the film, sections of the audience have burst into laughter at these points, even though the songs are usually about some character's feelings of betrayal. But other sections of the audience have cheered and applauded, especially when Effie belts out "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going"—a brash, loud and increasingly intense showstopper in which Effie goes into denial after Curtis, until recently her boyfriend, forces her out of the band. Hudson, a former American Idol contestant, goes over-the-top very quickly, then tops her over-the-topness, and it is entirely possible that the Academy will reward Hudson for her intensity, the same way it has rewarded the likes of Sean Penn—but still, is this really acting?
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