Don't believe the hype

Rating: 4/10 (1 January 2007)

Dreamgirls is a perfect example of why I hate most musicals. Just when there is a poignant dramatic point in the movie...mofos burst into song. That is just not the way human beings behave. The gattdam singing ruins it for me every time. They needed to limit the songs to when the girls were actually performing on stage.
Most of the music in Dreamgirls is second rate, overwrought & melodramatic. Too bad they couldn't use the magnificent Holland-Dozier-Holland songs from the Motown era.
Most of the performances were superficial; but I blame that on the shallow nature of the script. The characters played out like fuzzy facsimiles of real people.
When a gifted child gets a B on a report card we are disappointed it was not an A. If a retard is able to correctly add 2 + 2...we throw the kid a party. Critics are treating Dreamgirls the way we treat retards. Dreamgirls benefits from low expectations. It is a mediocre musical being celebrated as if it was on the same level as the Sound of Music.