Opening in a flurry of sound and shaking rumps, Dreamgirls finally arrives on the big screen and not a moment too soon. Legions of fans of the 1981 Broadway musical, some of whom have been holding their breath for as long as a quarter of a century, can finally exhale. Carbon dioxide levels are expected to be off the charts.
Dreamgirls is unlikely to prove quite such a life-changing experience for the rest of us, but there's no denying that there's spectacle to burn here. A uniquely '60s (and early '70s) African-American variation on that old Chicago razzle-dazzle, the whole movie is basically nothing but spectacle. Dreamgirls lunges from one fabulous musical number to the next, a nearly nonstop hit parade with scattered bits of story thrown in during the down time. Some might call the performances show-stopping, but that's not quite accurate. The unfortunate, buzz-defying truth is that when the music isn't happening, there's just not much of a show here to stop.
Along with the shaking rumps, gutbucket bass and Shaft wacka-wacka guitar, the movie opens with tight harmonies and even more tightly choreographed moves, as scads of hungry young musicians stretch bodies and vocal chords in an effort to outdo one another in an amateur talent contest. Among the wannabe stars are the Dreamettes, three young female singers who, like everyone else in the movie, are clearly based on real-life celebrities from Motown's golden age. The Dreamettes are The Supremes by any other name, and Dreamgirls is essentially their story (as well as the story of their peers), told through ever-so-slightly re-imagined events that more or less happened and, mostly, through songs that dutifully ape the distinctive sound of the era.
Only the names have been changed, to protect the innocent. And to avoid lawsuits and royalties.
This is a movie that wants to touch hearts, but never quite makes that happen — everything is just too slickly super-sized (proportions perfectly calibrated to pack in the rubes back on Broadway). Ditto for the characters, all of whom double as big, fat cultural icons in a flamboyantly superficial survey of what is arguably black music's most important decade. For all the outsized drama, Dreamgirls often unintentionally comes pretty darned close to being soul music's Spinal Tap, minus the jokes.
And for all the headlong energy, there's just the faintest smell of embalming fluid here. When you get right down to it, the movie feels a bit like one of those stilted "tribute shows" (Not the real Beatles, but an incredible simulation!) where various nobodies leap around pretending to be the famous artists they're cannibalizing.
Still, it does all go down awfully smooth. What saves Dreamgirls is that its core performers — particularly Beyoncé, Eddie Murphy and newcomer Jennifer Hudson — are talented and charismatic enough that, even when the material is bogus, it's a pleasure to watch the singers and dancers vigorously strutting their stuff. Sound and rhythm are omnipresent here, whether center stage in any number of big production numbers, or bubbling away just under the surface or at the edges of the frame. Occasionally, nuggets of plot are even communicated through song, Bollywood-style, and you'd be surprised how much more palatable this makes the dialogue.
So we watch as the Dreamettes, resplendent in matching outfits and big wigs, grab their first break, hook up with an ambitious manager (Jamie Foxx, dapper in shiny suits and processed hair), and wind up singing back-up for James "Thunder" Early (Murphy), a force of nature with a mile-high pompadour. Romantic entanglements immediately ensue as the Dreamettes streamline into Dreams, a transformation crystallized when willowy Dena (Beyoncé in the Diana Ross role) replaces big-boned Effy (massive-voiced Hudson) in their manager's affections and as the group's lead singer/visual focal point.
Our heroines take over the world soon enough, but not before unceremoniously dumping an increasingly disgruntled Effy, who re-emerges later in the film as a down-and-out single mom, only to morph into an Aretha-esque natural-born diva. Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy's character can't quite decide if he's James Brown or Wilson Pickett or Marvin Gaye, Foxx's character develops into a Berry Gordy Jr.-like Svengali with some very bad habits, and Beyoncé's Dena decides she wants to be more than just a pretty face. The characters bond, break apart and bond again (the saccharine "Family" is perhaps the movie's defining tune), styles change (with disco looming at the end of the road), and time marches on (history pulses throughout the film via standard-issue sound bites from the Reverend King and stock footage of Vietnam and the Detroit riots).
The characters break into song at the drop of a hat, in a blatantly artificial, irony-free way that we haven't seen much in the movies for many years. With a few notable exceptions, the songs themselves aren't particularly remarkable — either big, bland Broadway show tunes or barely serviceable homages to Motown or '60s R&B — but they're made much more alluring than they have any right to be by Beyoncé's polished, Diana Ross-inflected purr or Hudson's powerhouse pipes. As an alternative history of black music, the score is a bit of a joke; it pales even before something like 1996's overlooked Grace of My Heart, which performed a similar function for white pop.
But even if Dreamgirls is mostly empty calories, like most junk food, it's pretty hard to resist. The narrative is ridiculously familiar, and the story doesn't flow so much as its scenes simply bump up against each other, but nothing quite negates such addictively sweet, sticky candy for the eyes and ears. Even when the plot machinations have us suppressing a giggle or a yawn, we can rest assured that just around the corner is yet another musical number guaranteed to bring the house down. And any movie that can take a washed-up celebrity like Eddie Murphy and make us love him again — dressed in a hot-red suit, howling and strutting across the stage like a man possessed, the star of Daddy Day Care is finally without a trace of the self-parodying bullshit that's plagued him for years — well, that's got to be worth something.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2006.