Overlong, Oversung

Rating: 2/10 (1 February 2007)

For the first hour or so of Dreamgirls one could assume that this film was less of a musical and more of a musical biopic, perhaps along the lines of the excellent 'Walk the Line'. However, i'm sorry to say that it soon degenerated into mindless slush. The long road to boredom began when the characters began to sing the dialogue. This quickly became repetitive with each song lasting at least five minutes with only a short gap between them. Perhaps i am just not a musical person, although i have to say i enjoyed films such as Grease and the phantom of the opera. The songs in these, although long, at least did not repeat the main lines about 30 times. The songs that were perhaps exceptions to this were several of those sung on stage, as a proper performance. 'Dreamgirls' and 'Cadillac Car'were mildly enjoyable but i found 'Listen' the most moving.
Overall Dreamgirls raised my hopes, but then sent them plummeting downhill - stay for the first hour, you can probably guess the rest.