Dreamgirls

Rating

Director

Bill Condon

Screenplay

Bill Condon (Original Musical by Tom Eyen, Henry Krieger)

Length

131 min.

Starring

Jamie Foxx, Beyonc Knowles, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover, Anika Noni Rose, Keith Robinson, Sharon Leal, Hinton Battle

MPAA Rating

PG-13 (For language, some sexuality and drug content)

Review

Striking the balance between modern stage musicals and big screen adaptation is a feat not for the timid. Bill Condon takes us on a journey through black musical history in the long-awaited musical adaptation of Dreamgirls.

Based loosely on real life supergroup The Supremes, Dreamgirls follows Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles), Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) and Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) as they struggle to find their place in a segregated music industry.

The story begins at a talent contest where a tardy Effie White causes them to be bumped into the show’s final act. A sensation to the crowd, ruthless manager Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) arranges for them to lose the competition in order to get them into a more manageable position where he can “represent” them as backup singers to legendary singer James “Thunder” Early (Eddie Murphy).

Condon’s screenplay does its best with source material that doesn’t feature enough backstory for the lead characters. Outside of a couple of scenes where Deena talks about her repressive mother and needing to get permission to tour, there is little we know about these women. However, the film jumps right into their lives and we come to know and care about each one despite having little idea where they come from.

What I disliked about the original production was the music. With a few exceptions, I found the songs difficult to listen to repeatedly. However, the new arrangements for the film make many of those more palatable and with three new songs, the production becomes quite enjoyable.

The performances in the film are all top notch, led by a startling debut performance by American Idol cast off Jennifer Hudson. Hudson’s best moments are in song. When she sings “Love You I Do” (written for the film), “I Am Changing” and especially the show’s signature number “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”, she transcends the quality of virtually every woman in musical history. Her only stumbling blocks with the spoken dialogue occur early in the film when Effie is a young and impressionable woman. As the film progresses, so does Hudson’s talent. Passing the halfway mark, she comes fully into her own. I might even suggest that Condon asked his actors to do such as all of them begin slightly more timid as actors and finish with a dedication of purpose rarely seen in such productions, each paralleling the growth of their characters.

None of the film’s other performances can truly compare to Hudson’s but Rose and Keith Robinson as the group’s songwriter and Effie’s brother certainly rank among the year’s best. This can also be said of veteran Murphy. Murphy’s role begins as little more than a rebirth of his James Brown impression from Saturday Night Live but as the veneer is torn away, we find a vulnerable and emotional man whose wonderful performance of the original song “Patience” helps him achieve a stellar dramatic height in his otherwise comedic career.

Dreamgirls is as much about the rise to fame of the Dreams as it is about the emergence of black artists into a white-dominated Pop industry. Significant historical events also punctuate the piece acting as thematic parallels to the action of the story.

The film moves effortlessly from one show-stopping number to another and though there are a few other bumps in the road (excessive swirling cameras during “We Are Family” and a quizzical surprise for Curtis at the film’s conclusion), Dreamgirls is an entertaining and exciting production that breathes new life into a genre that was beginning to have the nails (Phantom of the Opera and Rent) driven into its coffin.

Review Written

January 29, 2007