Did you see Dreamgirls yet? I saw it last week at the Ziegfeld cinema in New York, a huge barn of a place that could screen an episode of Emmerdale and make it seem glamorous. It was the day before the Oscar nominations came out, when the of absence Dreamgirls from Best Picture category would cause the only real upset (discounting Leonardo DiCaprio’s nomination for Blood Diamond over The Departed.) Dreamgirls is one of those films you come out of feeling psyched, as if you’ve been in a fight, but the effect of which wears off so dramatically that by the time you get home you can hardly remember a single scene in it. The actors give it their all and Jennifer Hudson’s voice alone is enough to justify the ticket price. It’s a musical that isn’t ashamed to be a musical – the actors sing at each other, like in the old days, without looking too mortified (C.F Kevin Kline in De-Lovely). The film aches with good intentions and hurls at the audience every cliché of musical theatre – grasping men, abandoned women and children who don’t know who their fathers are. But there comes a point, somewhere in the middle, when all you can think is how much better it would’ve been if the score was made up of real songs by the Supremes. A musical can contain the best performances in the world, but if the music crap – or in this case, generic – then it just isn’t worth the effort.
