Movie Review: DREAMGIRLS (2006)

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Dreamgirls (2006)–***

Dreamgirls is the best movie musical to hit the screen since Chicago, but going into the screening, there wasn’t any suggestion it wouldn’t be. Veteran filmmaker Bill Condon’s obsessive historical focus was a perfect fit for a musical inspired by the rise of Motown. He also has the musical in his blood after writing Rob Marshall’s Oscar-winning Chicago.

The only doubt one could have had laid solely in the film’s ability to stand next to films like Moulin Rouge! andChicago. In that respect, Dreamgirls succeeds…barely.

Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles), Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) and Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) are the Dreams, a Detroit trio trying to make it big by doing amateur revues. They get their big break when a small-time manager Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) books them behind Jimmy Early (Eddie Murphy) on his national tour.

The tour isn’t in significant venues because a black artist doesn’t have cross over appeal to a white audience. Taylor wants to change that. As he begins to build a music empire around Early and the Dreams, backstage drama quickly begins. The brilliant White is replaced as the lead of the Dreams when Curtis decides Jones has the right stuff for white teenagers. As Taylor makes these changes, his artists and staff begin to question how their talent is being used and if the success is worth loosing the music’s soul.

Were Dreamgirls a straightforward drama, I’d describe it as an epic. But it’s not a drama.Dreamgirls just happens to be a musical that can claim to have the dramatic weight of Bob Fosse’s 1972 masterpiece Cabaret, even if it occasionally flounders as an old-fashioned movie musical.

Yes, there are weak spots inDreamgirls, particularly the number “Family,” but Bill Condon knows how to distract an audience with lavish, through-the-roof moments. One of those moments, is the much publicized Jennifer Hudson version of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” Hudson’s performance is an overpowering emotional eruption, one that many veteran actresses sometimes never achieve. In a short 5 minutes, Hudson becomes a bright, shining star.

There’s a fading star in this film that has a moment or two, as well. As Jimmy Early, Eddie Murphy surprises audiences much the way Richard Gere did when he sang and danced in Chicago. Here, however, Murphy doesn’t just revel in the glitz of his character, but instead makes a jarring dramatic turn as a star that has lost control of his own talent.

Even with two superb performances, the film isn’t the movie musical I’ve been waiting for. It still cuts too quickly and doesn’t linger from a wide enough angle to make the film an epic musical. With few exceptions, the film looks more like Rent than it does Chicago,Cabaret or the seminalWest Side Story. Sure it may be a different type of musical than most of them, but the standard has already been set. In spite of some show stopping musical acts, that missing sense of the genre is what makes Dreamgirls good instead of great.