What a disappointment

Rating: 6/10 (28 December 2006)

I loved the film version of Rent. I thought it did pretty much everything right. It opened up the stage musical, it switched it from a sung-through show to a more traditional musical (integrating spoken dialog sequences), and it maintained most of the brilliant original cast). I enjoyed The Producers on screen. Nothing much changed from the stage version and that was quite all right with me.
On the other hand, the long-awaited and much lauded Dreamgirls movie has ended up for me a hugely problematic film adaptation.
It may be hard for you out there to believe, but this often misguided movie had only a tiny fraction of the impact on me of the colorblind-cast stage performance put on last year by the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts at the Alex Theater in Glendale. THATwas an amazing and unforgettably powerful experience for me. From the opening beats, I was carried away by nonstop music and emotional highs.
On the other hand, Dreamgirls (the movie) had only one truly great moment for me and that was sure Oscar nominee and quite possible winner Jennifer Hudson's shattering rendition of And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going. For about 10 minutes, I was torn apart and reduced to tears at what will be remembered as one of the most powerful sequences in film history.
But the rest of Dreamgirls only occasionally caught fire.
The biggest mistake was to take out so much of the music. Unlike Rent (the movie), which successfully replaced sung dialog with spoken dialog, the first 45 minutes (I repeat 45 minutes) of Dreamgirls is actually a straight drama. Yes, there are songs, but the characters are supposed to be singing--on stage, in the recording studio, in a club, etc. When suddenly, three quarters of an hour into the movie, the actors burst into song (in character) singing Family to each other, it comes out of nowhere, from a different movie, certainly not the "docudrama with music" we've been watching up to that time.
Of the 20 songs in the film, only about 4 (all of them painfully incongruous) are sung as extensions of the characters. The only reason that Miss Hudson's tour de force character song doesn't fall on its face is in the brilliance of her performance.
I didn't really go for the "historical" background sequences. I can understand why the filmmakers may have wanted to anchor the film in "reality," but it just didn't work for me, especially (and the New York Times review pointed out) the songs bear no resemblance whatsoever to the music of the era.
This brings up another point that really rankled me. I have always felt that equating Deena Jones and The Dreams and Diana Ross and the Supremes was not particularly justified. Enough of the facts were changed in the stage version (and certainly the music wasn't Motown at all) that I always thought that Miss Ross couldn't possibly take offense if she saw the musical.
The film is something else indeed. I was flabbergasted at how the filmmakers not just imitated but pretty much copied actual costumes worn by the Supremes (1964-1970), created album covers as identical to the Supremes' actual albums as humanly possible, and even depicted a pseudo Jackson Five lead by a mirror image "Michael Jackson," all of which betrayed an astounding lack of originality. Miss Ross and Mr. Gordy should legitimately be outraged by the way they were "fictionalized" in this film.
On the positive side, the acting was uniformly excellent. Eddie Murphy gives his best and most dynamic performance in years, Jamie Foxx is suitably seductive and slimy, and Beyonce Knowles is gorgeous and understated (just what the role requires). And much of the film is gorgeous to look at and to listen to. The costumes, makeup, hair...though often too close to "the original"-- dazzled nonetheless.
I've seen Rent the movie twice and will probably watch it again. The Producers...I wouldn't mind a second viewing, though I could take it or leave it. Dreamgirls--once was enough for me.