this is one of the worst movies i've ever paid to see.

Rating: 4/10 (9 January 2007)

first off... none of the songs were very good, with possibly the exception of the theme. the story and characters were contrived. the American idol girl over-acts to the point of being ridiculous. jaime foxx winced his way through the movie. any time he is on the screen he looks as if he secretly knows how bad the film is.
all the musical numbers went on for far too long. at two hours and five minutes the movie is so insanely long and the plot drags along so slowly, i must have looked at my watch 20 times. the movie is so over the top ridiculous and terrible and filled to the brim with African American clichés and negative Hollywood stereotypes. the fact that this movie is being considered an awards contender makes me want to puke.
the directing was bad, the acting was worse and the songs, most of the time, were blatant mockeries of the classic blues, funk, soul and disco songs they flat-out failed to emulate. this movie is disrespectful to black people in the same ways as tripe like soul train and any martin lawrence movie, it just does it in a subtler way. to make a black movie with sophistication and intelligence would just be too much for Hollywood. they have to dumb it down for black audiences, because that's what they consider the audience to be.
i don't know why i went to this movie in the first place, as i thought chicago was awful as well. it just goes to prove how far a movie can go if it's promoted as something worthy of awards, which this film is definitely not. for modern cinema that portrays black history in a more reverent manner, look at films like Ali, Malcolm X, or Ray. maybe musical fans who don't care much about acting or plot or directing and just look to have a movie equivalent of a night watching American idol, set to progression of black pop culture will like this movie. those expecting to see an Oscar-caliber film, as it is being toted as, at the very least, wait to rent or watch down the road on cable. this film is not good. or at least, that's my opinion.
what's really sad is that bill condon has made several great movies in the past, and this film looks as though it were made by a first-time director. and not a good one.