Dreamgirls: An Ultrashort Review
Do you like Motown-Era music? Do you like musicals? Would you like to know more about race-music politics of the 60s and 70s? Do you like to see films about people pursuing their dreams and ripping out their hearts and souls on the floor to make just a bit of it come to be? Do you love intricate choreography involving dozens of people at a time?
Are you me? 😀
Loved it. Two solid thumbs up.
Don’t all musicals do that? The point of the genre is to use the musical conventions (probably evolved from the conventions of opera and plays) to underscore the emotional interplay between the characters. Once you sign up to watch a musical, you pretty much sign up to suspend disbelief for random singing. 😀
One commentary I heard on musicals is that when it is done well, the music carries forward the plot. When it isn’t done well, it feels like the story has come to a sudden halt to make room for a musical number.
In Dreamgirls, I felt that the songs and the performance of the actors/actresses really worked to convey the inner state of the characters and wasn’t just a frill to appease song-loving people.
It is different for everyone, which is why some people just don’t enjoy this kind of thing, but to someone who enjoys it and has accepted it like me, it is no different from background music swelling up to convey something dramatic or buzzing/sawing threateningly to convey, er, threat.
It’d be like going to see a movie about superheroes and being unable to accept the premise that one of them can fly because that breaks with too much reality. In a similar vein, breaking out in song breaks with a lot of reality, but it’s there for a reason.
However, if you felt it was done *poorly* and did feel like it tore you out of the scene, perhaps it could have been done better.
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I knew I was going to be wowed by Jennifer Hudson’s performance, but I was shocked at how good Beyonce’s performance in that “Listen” song.
“I knew I was going to be wowed by Jennifer Hudson’s performance, but I was shocked at how good Beyonce’s performance in that “Listen” song.”
Agreed.
Also, I’m a huge musical buff and I don’t care if it’s the cheesiest musical ever, I still love it. Case in point – Bye Bye Birdie!
I knew I was going to be wowed by Jennifer Hudson’s performance, but I was shocked at how good Beyonce’s performance in that “Listen” song.
*insert word “was” between word “song” and period*
I hate it when I make a mistake in a comment because I can’t fix it. 🙁
I even watched Beyonce’s video for it and thought she did great. I felt that the part when she wipes the tears from her face must be with real tears because she looks so broken up over what she’s saying/singing, but I’m sort of gullible. 😀
Musicals where people just break out into song instead of talking (or laughing or sobbing or screaming or whatever) like they would in real life kind of kill it for me. Any emotional impact a particular scene may have had is lost on me the second they cue the music. I think I would’ve liked this movie a lot more without those parts. Of course, Steph thinks Dreamgirls is the best thing ever, and bought it on HD-
DVD.