Dreamgirls DVD > Reviews > Dream a Little Dream

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Soundtrack	Average
How does it compare to similar films?	Satisfactory

Advantages:	A star - making turn from Jennifer Hudson and toe - tapping songs .
Disadvantages:	An entirely superficial movie .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Deena, Effie and Lorrell are childhood friends united by their love of singing. They enter a talent contest as the Motown-style Dreamettes and catch the eye of ambitious would-be producer Curtis Taylor Jr. He gets them a job as backing singers with rhythm and blues star James "Thunder" Early. They're on their way, but Curtis contrives to remove Effie from the group and make Deena the star, to make the band appeal more to white audiences. Deena's soon on the path to stardom, but is the price she has to pay too high?

Writer-director Bill Condon isn't a name you'd usually associate with movie musicals, having previously helmed biopics like "Kinsey" and "Gods and Monsters". That's not to say he doesn't make a decent fist of this thinly veiled song-and-dance take on Diana Ross and the Supremes. The film fizzes with energy and the song and dance numbers have real toe-tapping kick. But all the razzle-dazzle in the world cannot hide the narrative shortcomings of the film. If anything, the director's fondness for montages underlines them. You pretty much get the measure of the movie from the opening nosebleed edited intro of the characters; it's all style and no substance. The rise of the group is chronicled through a further series of montages that show them touring with Jimmy, climbing the charts and their inevitable meteoric rise shown through a collection of magazine covers and news footage. It may be an effective way to show their increasing success, but it stops you empathising with them because you're not experiencing enough of it.

The song and dance numbers are problematic because the majority are illustrative rather than narrative. They appear in the context of recordings and performances and because of the nature of the group, they lack emotional depth. Condon easily creates a sense of time and place through costume and set, showing the changing times through fashion and increasingly ludicrous stage outfits for the group. So thank God for the rabble-rousing songs that enliven the lengthy hundred and thirty-one minute running time. Without them the movie would drag terribly, with them, it only drags a little. Essentially it's a good-looking film with a good-looking cast that has little going on beneath the surface.

Like many movie musicals, Condon's screenplay is short on narrative depth and characterisation. There's only the thinnest of plots to tie together the songs, many of which don't even advance the story. It's the basic rags-to-riches tale for Deena. But the wider changes in society are barely touched upon. As with most musicals, it has the predictable cycle of ups and downs and you can figure out what's going to happen to each character before it occurs. But like the writers of the stage show, I think Condon misses the trick by focussing on Deena and not the marginalised Effie, who has by far the more interesting character arc. It's all very well seeing the pretty one getting all the fame and glory, but it's not very emotionally engaging. But Deena isn't malicious, just unaware of what Curtis is doing, so it's hard to dislike her. Effie, on the other hand is difficult to empathise with because she's talented but cocky with it. She brings many of her misfortunes on herself through her refusal to compromise. Lorrell barely has a personality and feels like she's there to make up the numbers. Jimmy is an obvious cipher for the perils of fame; his downfall due to women, drugs and booze seems inevitable. Meanwhile Curtis feels like a naked ambition stereotype.

Despite the civil rights undertones and dashes of casual racism there's no real sense of how difficult it was for a black artist to cross over into the mainstream. There's not enough detail, just background action. The dialogue is pretty much by-the-by, just the same old musical theatre platitudes about reaching for your dreams, taking the rough with the smooth and never forgetting where you come from or who your true friends really are. There's nothing especially memorable there - after all the talk is only there to plug the gaps between songs.

Beyoncé Knowles performance as Deena suits the style of the film and the character she's playing in that it is slick but superficial. You never believe she's living the emotional life of the part. But she doesn't have much to build on given the scanty script that makes Deena too trusting and naïve. In terms of raw talent, presence and acting ability, Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson blows her out of the water. As Effie, she's natural, confident and completely at home. She hasn't picked up any of the tricks bigger names have discovered to get them through films. She has great charisma and a big emotional range that's almost a match for her vocal one. Her singing is where her star quality really shines through - she has a huge voice, great range and is able to act through the songs. Anika Noni Rose is the odd one out of the three female leads because she doesn't have enough to do as tagalong Lorrell, so has little chance to show she can act.

I know Eddie Murphy was Oscar-nominated for his role as Jimmy "Thunder" Early, but I don't see what all the fuss was about. He's a comic actor turned serious but there are dozens of other talented thespians out there that could have done as well in the part. He's loud, raucous and slippery, a bit like the real Eddie Murphy. He can pull a decent performance out of the bag - going all James Brown on a number of occasions. The problem is that as both character and actor, he always feel as though they're performing, so the role feels untruthful. As Curtis, Jamie Foxx looks like a man who's playing all the angles; a mercenary hustler strip-mining talent wherever he finds it and only concerning himself with those he can control. He's smug, slick and demanding but doesn't feel as dangerous as he should, so is a toothless villain.

The music is the most important part of any musical, so you'd expect great things from the book written by Tom Eyen. But the majority of his compositions are exercises in style rather than content. His imitations of 60s soul, rhythm and blues and Motown styles could easily pass for the real thing, such as "I've Been Around" and "Cadillac Car". However, an excess of brushed cymbal and the stagy arrangements belies the production's stage origins. The music is at its strongest when going back to the roots of the modern Motown sound, producing a really dirty jazz sound or flurries of guitar blues. The later disco compositions feel disposable because they follow the format of the time and are produced to within an inch of their lives. They are so slick, they slide in one ear and out the other. The key narrative tracks such as "You're Gonna Love Me" are the big musical theatre numbers that have a lot to say emotionally but feel too big for their boots. The aforementioned ballad is a real test of Jennifer Hudson's talents just because it goes on so long and she has to hold a lot of notes. But it feels self-indulgent because it could get the message across in quicker. Overall the tracks are well-produced but lack real resonance.

"Dreamgirls" is a perfectly serviceable screen musical, but like many of its ilk it lacks the emotional depth to make it a great film. The writing is adequate, the direction conveys the excitement of the up-tempo song-and-dance numbers and Jennifer Hudson gives a star-making performance as Effie. But there wasn't enough substance to match the style for my tastes. All the rapidly edited musical numbers in the world can't compensate for lack of character development or original plotting. So it felt rather average, all in all.