Bill Condon, back in my good graces

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2009)

This is one of the more engaging film musicals that I've seen from the past few decades. The music is catchy, the lyrics are intelligent and enhance the story and characters, and the performances are all very good. Jennifer Hudson steals the show of course, as everybody told me she would. I was also impressed with Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover, and surprisingly Eddie Murphy whom I usually don't care for. The director Bill Condon has been quite up and down -- I thought "Gods and Monsters" was a masterpiece, one of the best films of the 1990s. But "Kinsey" was very turgid and pointless, and "Dreamgirls" was a very different type of thing than what I've seen him before so I wasn't sure how he would make it work. His directorial touch here is very light but effective. He has done a very good job of enhancing the appearance and performances of his stars while keeping the film's pace moving along, communicating all the information and emotion that he needs to without belaboring any points.
There is an extra deleted scene on the DVD which shows "Stepping to the Bad Side" done with a much longer introduction where the three male characters sing in character. I wish that this had been included in the main film, because as it is the integration doesn't really begin until we see Jennifer Hudson's character about to leave the group. That does make that particular scene more startling, but I would have liked a bit more songs done in-character before that point. Most of the early songs are performance pieces, with the singers doing the songs on stage that tangentially relate to the story but nothing very direct or dialog-oriented.
I would rate the film much higher if it weren't for the bogus ending. That had me throwing my hands up in despair, it really did. I guess it's their business if they don't want to make this a tragedy, but it really didn't ring true with everything else we'd seen in the movie. The sense of redemption for the Foxx character was very incomplete, even forced. I didn't care much for Knowles' character or her performance either, and at times it felt like more attention was being paid to her character just to justify her star presence. But hey, I did like her scene with John Lithgow. Something about Bill Condon, he loves putting John Lithgow in these strange wigs and having him play very odd characters, as he did also in "Kinsey." I am just very happy that this movie was made, and that I saw it. It's wonderful that we're in an age where black performers can really solidify a hit like this, on a regular basis and not just the occasional "Wiz" here and there. The film even has the audacity to question the value of the disco explosion and to reveal how soul music was perverted into machine music for commercial profit. It made me wonder what would happen to all these characters in the 1980s....