Review: "Dreamgirls" movie hits UK screens

Bill Condon's celluloid reworking of Michael Bennett's 1982 Broadway musical "Dreamgirls" finally hits UK screens this week. Having already achieved huge box-office success Stateside and steadily creating Oscar award buzz, expectations run high for this showbiz drama based loosely on the career of Diana Ross and the Supremes.

Fighting against the undercurrent of racism in 1960s America, a trio of black female soul singers, Effie, Deena and Lorell - known as the "Dreamettes" - attempt to chase their dream of stardom. Starting out as backing vocalists for established star, James Thunder Early, they are taken under the wing of manager, Curtis Taylor Jr., who is prepared to do whatever it takes to use them to further his own career as a music business mogul. Along the way, they are forced to make compromises in their musical and artistic integrity and greed and ambition lead to success for Deena and Lorell and failure for the outspoken and less outwardly attractive Effie.

In his superbly crafted screenplay for "Chicago" Condon somehow performed the magic trick of transferring a highly theatrical "vaudeville" stage show to a cinematic piece and making it work. With "Dreamgirls", however, he fails to recreate the magic. He avoids the use of song for dialogue until well into the movie and when it finally arrives it appears awkward and contrived. There is little evidence of sub-text in the script, resulting in insufficient character development. Lorell's character, for example, is very thin and even Deena is little more than cliched caricature. More fundamentally there is a flaw in the dramatic arc of the script, which seems to lack any genuine focus.

But the film is saved by two crucial ingredients. Firstly there is Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen's stunning score, which includes not only a string of great songs from the Broadway show (such as "I Am Changing" and "One Night Only") but also some new songs penned specially for the screen, notably a powerful ballad for Deena - "Listen". And secondly all the central performances are very strong - including Jamie Fox as cut-throat manager and dual love interest, Curtis and Eddie Murphy as sexy crack-snorting soul-singer, James Thunder Early. Beyonce Knowles does a surprisingly good job with the underwritten role of Deena and her vocals always soar with colour and light. But Jennifer Hudson's Effie steals the film. Her rendition of the legendary Broadway show-stopping number, "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" - though perhaps not quite recapturing the incredible qualities of Tony Award winner Jennifer Holiday's original - is quite astonishing.

On balance, "Dreamgirls" is what you might call an "almost" great movie. It could - and perhaps should - have been better. Even so, it is still genuinely enjoyable and at least takes this Broadway classic to a worldwide audience. For its soundtrack alone, it is well worth the price of a ticket.