Movies with Kevin
'Dreamgirls': Music's
Great, the Plot is Not
© By Kevin Paquet, 2006

"Dreamgirls" starts out as being the story of a trio of young women who want to become professional singers. The film opens, appropriately enough, as "The Dreamettes," try and fail to win a talent contest.

However, they are spotted backstage by Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), who hires them on the spot. He’s looking for backup singers for his act, James Thunder Early (Eddie Murphy). The last backups just quit because of Jimmy’s womanizing. Curtis manages to persuade the lead singer of the group, Effie White (Jennifer Hudson), that this is a good career move, and so they sign up.

It’s the early 1960s.

Jimmy Early is "hot," and the Dreamettes join him on his rise. There’s also a series of power struggles—Jimmy versus a white guy who steals a song of his, Curtis versus Jimmy’s other manager (played by Danny Glover), and the Dreamettes among themselves when Curtis decides to break them into their own group.

He thinks that Effie shouldn’t be the lead because she’s heavy, and therefore not as attractive as one of the supporting singers. So Effie is shoved to the back, and a rift opens. Things deteriorate, and she’s finally replaced with a woman named Deena Jones.

Some movies are helped by a slow skid to the surreal. "Apocalypse Now" is one of those movies and, to a smaller extent, so is "Pee Wee’s Big Adventure." The trick, always, is maintaining the suspension of disbelief, and if a movie’s creators blow too hard they’ll pop the bubble. Which is why this movie totally lost me for awhile when it turned into one of those musicals where everyone just started breaking into "spontaneous" sustained song.

The other two singers in the group are mere supporting characters in the first half of the movie, and after Effie White is thrown out and replaced with Deena Jones they become purely vestigial. Deena, for her part, is a very dynamic woman who nevertheless comes off a little flat because she just appears halfway through the film, which then skips several years ahead, into the 1970s. The music stays good but the plot falls apart.

I liked this movie, but it didn’t live up at all to the hype. Character development was allocated strangely—of the girls, only Effie and, to a lesser extent, Deena—ever really develop personalities. Substance is slowly pushed aside to make way for style, and while it’s really, really nice style, it’s only that.

On the other hand, there’s something to be said for a movie that feels like one long toe-tapping retro music video.

Bonus points for Eddie Murphy’s hair, the hilariously uptight early 1960s white people, and the credits. Kevin gives "Dreamgirls" three and a half stars out of five.