You want a show stopper, you got a show stopper

Rating: 9/10 (9 January 2007)

I just got home from seeing the film, and I'm still feeling overwhelmed by the emotion of it, particularly the depth of feeling that Jennifer Hudson managed to convey in her role as Effie White, the 'fourth' Dreamgirl, the underdog with the genuinely awe-inspiring vocal talent.
To say that the film is a monumental tour de force for Ms. Hudson is an understatement. Nearly halfway through, she delivers the song And I Am Telling You, and these moments alone redefine the term "show stopper" ten times over. Ms. Hudson delves as deep into the core of her very soul as a person could possibly go to wrench out a performance that left me emotionally overhauled good and proper. I defy, in fact, anybody with any shred of feeling to sit through this number unaffected.
The rest of the movie works too, in every possible way. Eddie Murphy especially is a standout, and this comes not a second too soon - he's been languishing away for years now in thankless roles, and it's a genuine thrill to see him come alive once again, in a part that allows him not only to show what a fantastic singer he is, but also how overpoweringly magnetic he is as a performer and as a film star.
The movie could easily be seen, by people who are not really familiar with the ground being covered, as a series of overworked clichés, but in reality, beyond being supremely entertaining, it's a fantastic historic document, a brilliant look at a period in time when things changed, musically, forever. In the years covered, the music business went through radical shifts, where mainstream white audiences for the first time accepted and ultimately embraced black music.
I had never seen the stage production, and I wasn't really familiar with the plot, so I was not prepared for the film to be so emotionally wrenching, but this is, of course, a good thing - it made me care deeply about the characters (Hudson's and Murphy's in particular), and this is what makes the film a transcendent success, in my estimation.