Brilliant talent wasted

Rating: 3/10 (16 June 2018)

I can't believe that so much acting and singing talent went into making this dud. No amount of vocal gymnastics (and Dreamgirls is full of it, to the point that it becomes meaningless) could have brought off the film's tiresome succession of plastic, mass-produced songs with corny lyrics and barely a hint of the Motown sound. And no amount of skilled acting could have made anything out of the film's lifeless script and flimsy story line.
Interestingly, one scene parallels what the film as a whole does: Edie Murphy has his new song stolen by the white recording industry, which sanitises it and removes all traces of soul from it to make it acceptable to the mainstream teenage audience of the day. This is exactly what Dreamgirls has done with the black music culture of the '60s and the Motown sound.
The result is a film that's an emotional flat liner with characters and situations you simply don't care about. The filmmakers did do some good work, though, in recreating the look of the period.
There was some really great music being made back then, but from this film you'd never guess it.