Dreamy

Rating: 10/10 (14 January 2007)

The best movie based on a Broadway musical since "Cabaret," "Dreamgirls" is simply dreamy. It's about the Rise and Fall of the Rainbow Records Empire (a fictionalized Motown), spanning the 1960s and '70s. The central drama involves the girl group, The Dreams, and the lives of its singers: Deena, Effie and Lorrell.
As Effie, Jennifer Hudson virtually steals the movie in the Jennifer Holiday stage role, making the show-stopper, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" her own. The number is the most eloquent, heart-wrenching nervous breakdown ever filmed and it signals the beginning of the end of Rainbow Records.
Written and directed by Bill Condon from a book and lyrics by Tom Eyen, music by Henry Krieger, the play's underlying gay sensibility remains intact. The Dreams are a mythical Supremes-like group (with a touch of Ronnie and Phil Spector thrown in as the marriage of Deena to Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx)), and their saga is nothing short of fabulous. The songs are mostly strong, though in the style of show tunes more than pop. They include new material from Krieger, including "Listen," Beyonce Knowles' big number. The film's look is rich and color-drenched, the emotions are big and the story a quickly moving epic, all with show costumes and wigs galore.
Like Condon's "Gods and Monsters", which was a point-perfect film treatment of Christopher Bramm's novel, "Father of Frankenstein," the choices made in the screen adaption of "Dreamgirls" are flawless. The sense of racial bigotry and strife surrounding the characters during turbulent times is definitely more strongly developed and powerfully portrayed in this movie.
It is doubtful you would leave this film emotionally untouched or aesthetically unimpressed.
p.s.: Eddie Murphy's performance and singing herein was a total revelation to me.