The 'whitest' movie ever to have a 'black' cast.

Rating: 2/10 (12 January 2007)

Dreamgirls is a painful, spiteful, hateful parody of 'black' performers and music from the US in the 60's/70's. Do not be fooled into thinking that this film contains any real music from the period- it does not! The successful US musical theatre exists to please a middle-class white audience that takes pride in how strongly it despises the musical outlets that helped the commercial success of the various modern 'black' musical forms. Only when one of these forms has become so established that it can be seen as 'quaint' and 'harmless' will it be blandly repackaged for the amusement of this audience.
Dreamgirls (the movie) is designed to be a commercial clunker, stuffed with household names to have maximum mainstream appeal. Danny Glover is, as one might expect, awful beyond belief. Foxx has a bland, and entirely unremarkable role. Murphy represents one of the worst acts of miscasting I have ever seen, and insults the memory of ever great 'black' male singer from the period, with his watered down 'Saturday Night Live' antics.
The female actors get to play nothing but tedious third rate clichés. Three are simply required to look tall, slim and pretty, while the fourth, Hudson, gets to play the 'fat' lady who screeches loudly at various times during the movie, enabling the whitebread-targetted audience to imagine they are back at the opera. While all four are supposed to be playing 'sexy' singers, Condon couldn't get female sexuality on film save his life.
There is no real story of substance. Sickeningly, the theme of 'black' musicians being locked out of the mainstream music biz is raised, when this film, Dreamworks produced, actually locks out any and all genuine 'black' music, while mocking it at the same time.
The film clearly had obscene amounts of money available to create 'no expense spared' production values that substituted for any creative thinking. Indeed, Condon is never happier then when illustrating how much he was able to spend. The end result gives some fleeting shots of technical excellence, and a lot of useless, overly familiar, flashy editing clichés. The film has no heart, and never could have given the source material, so Condon attempts to distract from this with every visual gimmick he can think of.
If you love music, genuine sexy performances, and directing that required the use of real imagination, and not merely a very fat wallet, go rent Idlewild, a musical film that doesn't just have a 'black' cast fronting for an all 'white' production, but actually has 'black' talent behind the camera, including director and authors of the musical numbers. Idlewild made my heart soar. Dreamgirls made me sick to the pit of my stomach.
Of course, disgracefully Dreamgirls will be competing for 'oscars' whereas Idlewild won't even get a mention. All of you that claim to like Dreamgirls should think long and hard on this fact, for it speaks of a very unpleasant truth.