Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls (Beyonce Knowles, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Murphy, Keith Richardson, Danny Glover) – Chicago brought the musical back to film and established a formula for taking old stage productions and breathing into them new life.  Dreamgirls is a tour de force for an ensemble of actors telling what seem to be the stories of Diana Ross, The Supremes, James Brown, Motown and Berry Gordy.  The music is pure Broadway and rhythm and blues with a hint of pop, featuring powerful sopranos and a cast that does its own singing – even Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx.  There might be Oscar nominations here, and my choices would be Murphy as the over-the-top James Brown character and to newcomer Jennifer Hudson, who plays Effie, the talent of the Dreamettes (later The Dreams, later Deena Jones and The Dreams).  Hudson has an amazing voice and appears in her first film, having lost early on American Idol, but finding a part made for her.  Beyonce not only can sing, she can act, playing the Diana Ross character but without all of the edge and the ego.  This is a true musical, a little less operatic than Chicago and more tuneful than Rent.  The story is predictable, of course, as the Dreamettes are found, used (by the Gordy character, played well but not to Oscar caliber by Jamie Foxx), idolized, and (unlike the actual Supremes) redeemed.  The scope of the film, directed by Bill Condon (Kinsey), who also wrote the screenplay (as he did Chicago) from the “book” by Tom Even, is ambitious and, while it is so obviously a play, there are enough other scenes to make you feel like you’re watching a movie.  The audience actually clapped after one of the songs by Hudson, and they clapped at the end, which is unusual outside Hollywood so that will tell you how much the crowd enjoyed the film.  Its Oscar worthiness as a film will depend on what the competition is like but this is every bit the film Chicago was.  Chances are you’ll enjoy this movie no matter what with my only criticism being the relatively poor “looping” (the synchronizing of the singing voices to the actors lip-synching).  Enjoy this outstanding film concert.