Strongly Cast Musical Strikes sour note

Rating: 3/10 (2 January 2007)

I was extremely disappointed by Bill Condon's "Dreamgirls" which is being hyped as one of the year's best pictures. It is not, not even by a long shot.
Dreamgirls starts out promising setting up numerous well defined characters and it very effectively places the story in the late 1950's. Period detail is amazing and at about the one hour mark the film looks destined for greatness.
Then the cast starts singing.
And singing.
To make matters worse the songs are atrocious; one wonders if they are intended as camp or satire. If they be satire they go on far too long, if they are supposed to be the real thing then someone has a warped sense of humor or simply don't care that the audiences has to watch on as the film self destructs in the final act.
The subject matter could have made a great film. Unfortunately by fictionalizing the account they rob the story of any authenticity. Very strong performances by Eddie Murphy and Jamie Fox simply languish before the entire ensemble cast folds up and dies.
Why the film has received such rave notices is beyond me. Perhaps it is the sheer storytelling audacity in presenting a film that grows less realistic with the passage of each scene (Kind of like Olivier's Henry V in reverse)or it may be the fine cast. Most likely it is that these critics don't have an ear for music as these banal songs would be booed off the stage of even American Idol (as one of the actresses apparently was.)
That should tell you something.