An OK film for me

Rating: 5/10 (18 December 2006)

There is no denying that everybody in this film worked hard playing their parts. I can also see that the filmmaker behind it is good-intentioned. But at the end, this is just another (albeit high-end) product of Hollywood banality. Firstly, just like 95% of Hollywood products today, it is a recycling of old, tested, material, in this case a theatrical production of the same name. No originality. Secondly, the filmmaker, typical of creativity-challenged Hollywood type, just cannot resist using gimmicks -- Eddy Murphy singing, Beyonce acting, etc. They tried hard, but do we have such a shortage of singing and acting talents that we must use these two? As it turned out, the best performances in the film were not by those famous ones but by no-names such as Hudson. These are exactly the reasons that the quality of Hollywood movies goes down while their costs constantly go up.