I'm just back from a screening of Dreamgirls, which I guess is opening in most of the country on Christmas Day. Actually, the movie ended at 9:00 but we had to sit through the end credits, which ran longer than some studio deals I've had.
The cinematography and art direction are great. The performances — especially Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson — are great. The editing, the orchestrations, the mixing…all the technical details are great, and you probably smell the "but" coming so here it is: But I didn't like the movie very much. I know it'll probably take in serious megabucks. It's certainly the one everyone in Hollywood wants to see. (We were supposed to go to a screening last night but it and all the others that had been scheduled were overbooked, and a nice lady at Paramount switched us to tonight and one of several hurriedly-added additional showings. The fact that people in L.A. are eager for it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be storming the cineplexes in Wyoming…but it sure doesn't hurt.)
Why didn't I have a better time? Same reason I didn't like the original musical back in the mid-eighties: Don't like most of the songs, don't care about most of the people. In case you don't know, this is basically the story of Berry Gordy's Motown Records empire and more specifically of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but with the names and some details changed. I might have been interested in a story about how the group went from obscurity to stardom but that all pretty much happens in the first half hour, and it happens via cynical means that have very little to do with them being deserving talents…or even having any musical integrity. The Gordy clone demotes the lead singer with the thrilling voice to backup status, elevates a blander vocalist to sing lead and otherwise takes the guts out of their music…then he bribes a lot of disc jockeys to play their records and otherwise buys their success.
From then on, it's a film about a bunch of successful people squabbling over who's sleeping with who and getting hurt by the machinations of the guy who manipulated their way into stardom in the first place. The spine of the story is what happens with Effie White, who's played by Jennifer Hudson and who's based on the real-life problems of Florence Ballard in fitting in with the Supremes. Ms. Hudson is electric in the role — rarely do you see a screen debut with "Oscar" so boldly written across it — but I'm sorry. I didn't feel for Effie because she was relegated to back-up singer in the group…and for the same reason I never felt sympathy for George Harrison because John and Paul so dominated The Beatles. More interesting to me than Effie was the situation of James "Thunder" Early, played by Eddie Murphy…but that story ends abruptly and you don't see enough of it before it does.
Ultimately, I guess, it's all about the songs. In a movie like this, you want to love them. You need to love them because the superstar singing group has to thrill you with their performances…and I found the songs — most of them, anyway — forgettable. Jennifer Hudson stops the film with "I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," just as Jennifer Holliday stopped the original Broadway show with the same tune. I think it's a phony theatrical moment because the song is shrill and full of pain disproportionate to what's actually been done to the woman singing it. Matter of fact, I think that's the moment the film really lost me for good and here's what's really odd about it. Despite the title and many of the lyrics, this is not a song about a woman who's defiantly refusing to leave. It's about a woman who's not going along; i.e., she's quitting. As many critics of the original musical observed, she sings "I'm not going" and then she goes. And because she goes, her life gets even worse. For me, the whole story just has too many moments of people being self-destructive but acting like they've been victimized. I know people do that all the time but it doesn't make me care what becomes of them.
You may well enjoy this movie and you certainly shouldn't avoid it because of me. A lot of people at the screening loved it and applauded and like I said, I think it'll make a ton o' cash. I hope it does because we need more screen musicals to do well so they'll make more screen musicals. If they do, I'm sure there'll be many that I enjoy more than Dreamgirls.