Will this film ever end?

Rating: 3/10 (27 January 2007)

This was one of most excruciating experiences I have had in the cinema for quite some time. Far from being surprised that it didn't get a Best Film nomination for the Oscars, I am just bemused that it somehow managed to beat Little Miss Sunshine at the Golden Globes.
Let's talk about the good bits first. Eddie Murphy was fantastic, and so was Jennifer Hudson - though she wasn't done a whole lot of favors by the script, or a director who doesn't know when enough is far too much.
Now, what I didn't like. This is a whole lot easier ...
In the first thirty minutes, there is nothing that constitutes genuine drama. You have a bunch of marginalized African Americans in early 60s USA, and yet nothing is too much trouble. Owning a Cadillac dealership, getting a back-up gig, launching a record. They play a song - a pretty ordinary song - and the crowd is in raptures.
Not coincidentally, in the absence of drama, it was impossible to form any sort of emotional attachment with the characters - Effie notwithstanding.
In contrast to the Jimmy Early and Effie White characterizations, Beyonce and Jamie Foxx's roles are totally underwritten with no defining traits worthy of the name. This is a bit of a problem when the film is largely about them. Or is it? I'm not sure whose film it is.
When the story does generate drama - like Effie sleeping with Curtis, like Curtis sleeping with Deena - it happens off screen. In a script so short of conflict - at least in the first couple of reels - I would have thought maybe these scenes would be worthy of inclusion. Certainly they were more pertinent to the narrative than the scene where Jimmy first sleeps with Laurel.
But the most egregious aspect of the film was the way, about an hour into the film, that the director decides, "I know, let's start getting the characters to sing to one another like in a musical!!!". I have nothing against musicals. Love them. From Rodgers and Hammerstain to Sondheim. But, if you are going to make a musical, it's a good idea to kick off in that vein, set up a contract with the audience, and then maintain it. In the cinema where I viewed it - Oxford St, Sydney - people laughed when the characters starting singing.
And then it went on, and on, and on, and on.
And what was it all about? What does it say about the human condition? About African Americans in particular? Whose film was it?
My opinion is clearly in the minority on this site, but I think this was a load of self-indulgent tosh, and I applaud the Academy for showing greater taste than the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who have displayed the same judgment they did when nominating Pia Zadora as most promising new talent.