Dreamgirls

Director: Bill Condon
Screenplay: Bill Condon (based on the musical by Tom Eyen)
Stars: Jamie Foxx (Curtis Taylor, Jr.), Beyoncé Knowles (Deena Jones), Eddie Murphy (James “Thunder” Early), Danny Glover (Marty Madison), Jennifer Hudson (Effie White), Anika Noni Rose (Lorrell Robinson), Keith Robinson (C.C. White), Sharon Leal (Michelle Morris), Hinton Battle (Wayne), Mariah I. Wilson (Magic)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Year of Release: 2016
Country: U.S.
Dreamgirls
Dreamgirls

Loosely based on the story of The Supremes’s astronomical rise to musical superstardom during the turbulent 1960s under the auspices of Motown’s Berry Gordon, Dreamgirls was a hit Broadway musical in 1981, winning a plethora of Tony Awards and running for 1,522 performances. The vaguely scandalous combination of its barely disguised real-life celebrity dirt and canny mix of blues, R&B, and show tunes was a potent combination, but more than three decades later, it feels a bit stale in its cinematic incarnation by Bill Condon.

Part of this is not so much the fault of the material as it is the times in which that material is being mounted. Our scandal-rag-fueled culture of infotainment is so awash in news about celebrity in-fighting, weddings and breakups, and disreputable behavior that the need to disguise anything with fake names (even ones that sound like their real-life doppelgangers) has a faint aura of quaintness. The rise and fall and rise again of divas is such a cliché at this point that it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm for another ride. The basic story’s unending passage through the culture grinder has made it trite—drama on the level of VH-1 Behind the Music and American Idol. Thus, it should come as no surprise that an American Idol contestant, then-25-year-old Jennifer Hudson, is one of the stars of Dreamgirls, although the real irony is that she is the movie’s best asset, far outshining the likes of Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx and musical superstar Beyoncé Knowles, whose own problems outshining the other members of her former girl group Destiny’s Child create an appropriate parallel within the narrative in Dreamgirls.

Dreamgirls charts the ups and downs of a fictional R&B group from Chicago originally known as The Dreamettes. They get their first break when they are hired to sing backup for Jimmy “Thunder” Early (Eddie Murphy), a James Brown-esque soul singer who is constantly complaining that other singers are stealing his moves and looks (whether this is true or not is left vague). When The Dreamettes get picked up by aspiring music mogul Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), lead singer Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) is dumped for the less talented, but more conventionally beautiful and thinner Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles). The underlying goal is for the group to “cross over,” that is, make them more accessible to mainstream white audiences. Their blackness needs to be downplayed, hence the need to replace big-voiced, big-boned, darker-skinned Effie with the all-around lighter Deena (no wonder Diana Ross, Deena’s real-life counterpart, reportedly refused to see the musical when it debuted on Broadway).

Like most rise-and-fall stories, Dreamgirls tries to do too much with too many characters, all of whom are on various arcs up or down. Each character has a counterpart who heads in the opposite direction, which is meant to suggest the price of success, but mostly serves to overwhelm the production. Thus, as Curtis Taylor Jr. soars to the top of the music scene, former talent manager Marty Madison (Danny Glover) gets kicked to the curb. As Deena becomes a pop sensation, Effie ends up in the welfare office. As The Dreamettes (later known as The Dreams) reach the top of the charts with pop and disco, Jimmy Early and his wailing soul sound bottom out in booze and heroin. And so and so forth.

All of this would work better if the film had developed a stronger narrative flow, but writer/director Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast, Kinsey) is forced again and again to resort to montages and the overused visual gimmick of an audition morphing into a full-fledged performance via a slow 360-degree spin of the camera. Dreamgirls feels far too often like a collection of scenes, rather than the driving narrative it should be. There are parts where the story comes to pulsating, vibrant life, especially when Effie belts the show-stopping number “And I Am Telling You” directly to Curtis, a legendary song that conveys as much about her basic desire for love as it does about her unwillingness to be removed from the group.

Hudson’s performance (for which she won an Oscar) is electric, literally trembling with emotion, which mostly serves to highlight how disappointing the other performances are. Not only is Beyoncé cast above her head, but Foxx is surprisingly ineffective as the smooth charmer and ruthless businessman (he displayed far more moxy singing backup for Kanye West’s “Gold Digger”). As the fading Jimmy Early, Eddie Murphy has some of the film’s most effectively dramatic moments (witness the pain on his face when his attempt at a comeback is casually squashed by Curtis), but it’s hard to watch his musical performances and not see them as extensions of his James Brown impersonations from his Saturday Night Live days.

Condon wisely keeps the production relative modest by big-budget musical standards. He gives us plenty of sweeping crane shots and appropriately lavish production numbers, but it never feels bloated or outrageous ala Joel Schumacher’s ridiculously overproduced The Phantom of the Opera (2004). The film looks great, which unfortunately emphasizes how little genuine emotion is in it. Condon is not afraid to let the characters sing their dialogue to each other—something Rob Marshall’s Chicago (2002) (for which Condon wrote the screenplay) avoided by staging all the musical sequences as fantasies—and Dreamgirls is better for it because it provides its only emotional impact. In fact, it is hard to imagine anyone being able to convey Effie’s indignity outside of song. Yet, whatever boldness Condon brings to the project is ultimately sunk by its disappointing lack of human drama in favor of by-the-numbers rise-and-fall theatrics.

Dreamgirls Director’s Extended Edition Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

Aspect Ratio2.35:1
Audio
  • English DTS:X surround
  • English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround
  • French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
  • Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
  • Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
  • SubtitlesEnglish, French, Spanish, Japanese
    Supplements
  • Jennifer Hudson Audition: “Can He Even Sing”
  • Jennifer Hudson Audition: “What About Me”
  • Jennifer Hudson Audition: “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”
  • Jennifer Hudson Screen Test: “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”
  • DistributorParamount Home Entertainment
    Release DateOctober 10, 2017

    COMMENTS
    Dreamgirls has been available on Blu-ray for nearly a decade now, but this new “Director’s Extended Edition” release features a new 4K digital transfer that benefits quite a bit from MPEG-4 compression, as opposed to the older MPEG-2 compression on the earlier disc. The disc includes two versions of the film via seamless branching: the original theatrical version and a new director’s cut that restores about 10 minutes of footage. The image is overall sharper, clearer, and generally more pleasing to eye, with better color presentation and black levels. The disc also boasts new DTS:X and DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1-channel surround soundtracks that are quite simply superb. The musical performances are obviously the film’s main assets, and they sound outstanding in the new mix, which is clear, detailed, and full without being overly aggressive. I wish I could say similarly positive things about the supplements, but unfortunately this is where the new disc is something of a letdown. None of the supplements from the previous edition are included here; instead, we get footage from three of Jennifer Hudson’s auditions and one of her screen tests. Don’t get me wrong—it’s great to have that footage, but it would have been nice if all the other supplements had been included, as well, so fans didn’t have to keep two editions on their shelves.

    Copyright © 2017 James Kendrick

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    All images copyright © Paramount Home Entertainment

    Overall Rating: (2.5)




    James Kendrick

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