A Musical should have.... GOOD MUSIC

Rating: 2/10 (14 November 2007)

Wow, what a concept. I like musicals, so I generally have no problem with lots of music in a film. I also enjoy all genres of music. But all of these songs sounded the same; and the lyrics were just awful. At one point I thought a song was purposely bad for some plot purpose, but, no, that would be too intelligent and complex.
The plot was predictable and meaningless. Cheaply produced television has more dramatic tension. The director/writers/whoever simply do not do enough to involve the audience into the characters. Also, as has been mentioned, there was no character development. The song numbers were WAY to long, especially since the music was so bad, and much too frequent. Every time I thought the film would settle into a bit of acting to move the story along, they would start singing AGAIN! Plus, the songs contributed nothing to the the story or the characters, simply repeating ad nauseam what had already been stated in ONE line of dialogue.
There was no historic context either, as noted by others; i.e. absence of microphones on a 1960's stage, almost no changes in clothing over time, music all sounding the same. Some of the stuff they tried to insert was implausible: like they would schedule a recording session *during* the summer '67 Detroit riots??? Even if the studio hadn't been destroyed, normal people would have stayed home.
And don't get me started on the choreography. What choreography, you ask? Exactly. Compare this film to Chicago and you realize how Dreamgirls is the deformed alien freakoid of all musicals ever filmed.
Oh, and my feminist rant: That stupid photo shoot montage? a blatant opportunity for the males in the audience to drool over Beyonce.