Dreamgirls (2006)
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| Release Date: | December 15, 2006 (Limited) December 25, 2006 |
| On DVD: | May 1, 2007 |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Director: | Bill Condon |
| Writer: | Bill Condon |
| Cast: | Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover, Anika Noni Rose, Jennifer Hudson, Keith Robinson |
| Studio: | DreamWorks Pictures |
| Official site: | dreamworks.com/dreamgirls |
| Running Time: | 125 minutes |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for language, some sexuality and drug content. |
Twenty-five years after first bringing Broadway audiences to their feet, the Tony Award-winning musical sensation "Dreamgirls" comes to the big screen starring Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx ("Ray"), Beyoncé Knowles ("Austin Powers in Goldmember"), Eddie Murphy ("The Nutty Professor," "Dr. Dolittle"), Danny Glover ("Lethal Weapon"), Jennifer Hudson ("American Idol"), and Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose (Broadway's "Caroline or Change").
Set in the turbulent late 1960s and early ‘70s, "Dreamgirls" follows the rise of a trio...
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Movie Review
I just watched Dreamgirls, the Best Musical or Comedy of the Year according to the Golden Globes. The movie, starring Beyonce Knowles and Jamie Foxx, has skyrocketed "American Idol" non-winner Jennifer Hudson to stardom (and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) and earned Eddie Murphy an Oscar nomination as well. There was a lot of fuss when Dreamgirls didn't make the cut as a Best Picture nominee at the Academy Awards, or when it didn't win Best Song, but it is clear why neither events happened...
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Anonymous says:
May 12, 2007For once, I basically agree with the Movie-Source reviewer. "Dream Girls" lacks real substance, and the "argument songs" introduce incongruous elements into an already thin storyline. I mean, here we are at an intense, dramatic moment and the characters suddenly break into song. The acting is good, maybe even above and beyond the call of duty, given that the actors were obliged to fill cardboard cutout roles. The best performance by far is by Eddie Murphy, but then his character, James "Thunder" Early is by far the most interesting character. Too bad we see relatively little of him. Jamie Foxx is good but a mere shadow of the stunning performance he turned in for "Ray." But, then again, in "Ray" he played Ray Charles, a real flesh and blood character, as opposed to the bloodless Curtis Taylor, the ruthless business manager for the Dreams. The movie is set in the turbulent era of the 1960s and early 1970s, but this era serves as mere window dressing and has no real impact on the story or the characters. One example of this is a particularly grueling recording session, where the tensions between Curtis and Effie, who has been deposed as lead singer of The Dreams by Curtis, comes to a head. She storms out of the studio and out into the middle of the Detroit riots!!! One has no inkling that the Detroit riots are even occurring until she runs out of the studio. Evidently, this event, which produced 41 deaths and hundreds of millions dollars property damage, was not enough to deter a recording session in its midst. Another example is when one of the Dreams jokingly complained about an LP recording of the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King on the grounds that Dr. King was "an amateur"--huh? Most of the movie is not that lame but you get the idea. The music is OK but the Motown sound of the Supremes and Aretha Franklin is much better, as is the music in "Ray" and "Walk the Line," which of course treats you to the music of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash respectively. Those two movies are far grittier, more realistic, and captivating portrayals of not only the lives of musicians but the workings of the music industry. Not that "Dream Girls" totally lacked interesting thematic material, since the movie does provide some insight into the pressures of big money and music industry politics on artistic integrity, but it did so in a format that blunted the potential power of these thematic elements. Which leads to my final gripe: "Dream Girls" won a Golden Globe Best Picture award. In a year that featured "Pan's Labyrinth," "United 93," and "The Children of Men," this makes no sense. But, then again, the Golden Globes (known affectionately, to me, as the "Globs"), last year, gave the best picture to "Brokeback Mountain," a mistake that the Academy did not repeat, preferring instead to make their own mistake in awarding the Best Picture Oscar to "Crash" or was it "Trash"? Or "Cash"? But the brain retreads at the Globs and at the Academy only get it right half the time--after all, does anyone remember what movie won the Oscar in the year "Dr. Strangelove," one of the most brilliant films ever, was made? Neither the Academy nor the Globs even nominated my overwhelming choice for Best Picture, "United 93," a film which broke many of the rules, including using no name actors (thank God!), which in addition to its too-hot-to-handle (for lesser film makers) subject matter, evidently constitutes an unpardonable sin. That aside, "Dream Girls," while by no means a bad movie, was one of the biggest disappointments of the year.
Grade: C+
** (two stars out of four)
Anonymous says:
May 6, 2007For once, I basically agree with the Movie-Source reviewer. "Dream Girls" lacks real substance, and the "argument songs" introduce incongruous elements into an already thin storyline. I mean, here we are at an intense, dramatic moment and the characters suddenly break into song. The acting is good, maybe even above and beyond the call of duty, given that the actors were obliged to fill cardboard cutout roles. The best performance by far is by Eddie Murphy, but then his character, James "Thunder" Early is by far the most interesting character. Too bad we see relatively little of him. Jamie Foxx is good but a mere shadow of the stunning performance he turned in for "Ray." But, then again, in "Ray" he played Ray Charles, a real felsh and blood character, as opposed to the bloodless Curtis Taylor, the ruthless business manager for the Dreams. The movie is set in the turbulent era of the 1960s and early 1970s, but this era serves as mere window dressing and has no real impact on the story or the characters. One example of this is a particularly grueling recording session, where the tensions between Curtis and Effie, who has been deposed as lead singer of The Dreams by Curtis, comes to a head. She storms out of the studio and out into the middle of the Detroit riots!!! One has no inkling that the Detroit riots are even occurring until she runs out of the studio. Evidently, this event, which produced 41 deaths and hundreds of millions dollars property damage, was not enough to deter a recording session in its midst. Another example is when one of the Dreams complained about an LP recording of the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King on the grounds that Dr. King was "an amateur"--huh? Most of the movie is not that lame but you get the idea. The music is OK but the Motown sound of the Supremes and Aretha Franklin is much better, as is the music in "Ray" and "Walk the Line," which of course treats you to the music of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash respectively. Those two movies are far grittier, more realistic, and captivating portrayals of not only the lives of musicians but the workings of the music industry. Not that "Dream Grils" totally lacked interesting thematic material, since the movie does provide some insight into the pressures of big money and music industry politics on artistic integrity, but it did so in a format that blunted the potential power of these thematic elements. Which leads to my final gripe: "Dream Girls" won a Golden Globe Best Picture award. In a year that featured "Pan's Labyrinth," "United 93," and "The Children of Men," this makes no sense. But, then again, the Golden Globes (known affectionately, to me, as the "Globs"), last year, gave the best picture to "Brokeback Mountain," a mistake that the Academy did not repeat, preferring instead to make their own mistake in awarding the Best Picture Oscar to "Crash" or was it "Trash"? Or "Cash"? But the brain retreads at the Globs and at the Academy only get it right half the time--after all, does anyone remember what movie won the Oscar in the year "Dr. Strangelove," one of the most brilliant films ever, was made? Neither the Academy nor the Globs even nominated my overwhelming choice for Best Picture, "United 93" which broke many of the rules, including using no name actors (thank God!), which in addition to its too-hot-to-handle (for lesser film makers) subject matter, evidently constitutes an unpardonable sin. That aside, "Dream Girls," while by no means a bad movie, was one of the biggest disappointments of the year.
Grade: C+
** (two stars out of four)
Anonymous says:
May 6, 2007For once, I basically agree with the Movie-Source reviewer. "Dream Girls" lacks real substance, and the "argument songs" introduce incongruous elements into an already thin storyline. I mean, here we are at an intense, dramatic moment and the characters suddenly break into song. The acting is good, maybe even above and beyond the call of duty, given that the actors were obliged to fill cardboard cutout roles. The best performance by far is by Eddie Murphy, but then his character, James "Thunder" Early is by far the most interesting character. Too bad we see relatively little of him. Jamie Foxx is good but a mere shadow of the stunning performance he turned in for "Ray." But, then again, in "Ray" he played Ray Charles, a real felsh and blood character, as opposed to the bloodless Curtis Taylor, the ruthless business manager for the Dreams. The movie is set in the turbulent era of the 1960s and early 1970s, but this era serves as mere window dressing and has no real impact on the story or the characters. One example of this is a particularly grueling recording session, where the tensions between Curtis and Effie, who has been deposed as lead singer of The Dreams by Curtis, comes to a head. She storms out of the studio and out into the middle of the Detroit riots!!! One has no inkling that the Detroit riots are even occurring until she runs out of the studio. Evidently, this event, which produced 41 deaths and hundreds of millions dollars property damage, was not enough to deter a recording session in its midst. Another example is when one of the Dreams complained about an LP recording of the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King on the grounds that Dr. King was "an amateur"--huh? Most of the movie is not that lame but you get the idea. The music is OK but the Motown sound of the Supremes and Aretha Franklin is much better, as is the music in "Ray" and "Walk the Line," which of course treats you to the music of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash respectively. Those two movies are far grittier, more realistic, and captivating portrayals of not only the lives of musicians but the workings of the music industry. Not that "Dream Grils" totally lacked interesting thematic material, since the movie does provide some insight into the pressures of big money and music industry politics on artistic integrity, but it did so in a format that blunted the potential power of these thematic elements. Which leads to my final gripe: "Dream Girls" won a Golden Globe Best Picture award. In a year that featured "Pan's Labyrinth," "United 93," and "The Children of Men," this makes no sense. But, then again, the Golden Globes (known affectionately, to me, as the "Globs"), last year, gave the best picture to "Brokeback Mountain," a mistake that the Academy did not repeat, preferring instead to make their own mistake in awarding the Best Picture Oscar to "Crash" or was it "Trash"? Or "Cash"? But the brain retreads at the Globs and at the Academy only get it right half the time--after all, does anyone remember what movie won the Oscar in the year "Dr. Strangelove," one of the most brilliant films ever, was made? Neither the Academy nor the Globs even nominated my overwhelming choice for Best Picture, "United 93" which broke many of the rules, including using no name actors (thank God!), which in addition to its too-hot-to-handle (for lesser film makers) subject matter, evidently constitutes an unpardonable sin. That aside, "Dream Girls," while by no means a bad movie, was one of the biggest disappointments of the year.
Grade: C+
** (two stars out of four)
Anonymous says:
May 5, 2007For once, I agree almost totally with the review. The film is a lot of spectacle and little substance, with the incongruous "argument" songs thrown in, which detracted greatly from what little drama or narrative was in the movie. The acting is pretty good, with Eddie Murphy, as James "Thunder" Taylor, turning in, by far, the most outstanding performance. Jamie Foxx is good but his performance is a mere shadow of the stunning performance he turned in for "Ray," a movie, that, like "Walk the Line," has the substance, gritty realism, and drama that "Dream Girls" almost totally lacks. The music is OK but the Supremes or Aretha Franklin is better and I defintely enjoyed the music in "Ray" and "Walk the Line" much better because, in those, you heard music by Ray Charles and Johnny Cash respectively. The movie is set against the turbulent 60s and early 70s, but these events are window dressing and have little impact on what little story there is. A prime example of this is the scene in which the Dreams are doing a grueling recording session where the tensions between Curtis and Effie come to a head. She abruptly leaves the studio and steps out into the Detroit riots, which despite 41 deaths, were evidently not serious enough to keep the Dreams from a recording session right in their midst. In another scene, one of the Dreams complains about a recording of Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches, on the basis that Dr. King is an amateur--huh?
This movie did not deserve an Oscar nomination and most certain not a Golden Globe Best Picture Award, especially not when you have much more deserving and overlooked films like "United 93" and "Children of Men" waiting in the wings for the most richly deserved recognition that never came. But the brain retreads in the Golden Globes (known to me, affectionally, as the "Globs") and the Academy get it wrong about half the time anyway, also, a year ago, not choosing "Walk the Line" and in the case of the Globs giving "Brokeback Mountain" the Best Picture, a mistake the Academy did not repeat, choosing, instead, to make their own mistake, with "Crash" or was it "Flash"? "Cash"? For my money, "Dream Grils" was one of the great disappointments of the year. (Speaking of brain retreads, who's this Audi dude that keeps submitting gibberish to this site, get a brain and write a real review!!!)
Grade: C+
**Two stars out of four
Anonymous says:
March 12, 2007Ladies and Gents, It comes out on May First of 07. both on standard and 2 disc.