Film Review: DreamgirlsThursday, January 4, 2006 - It takes a helluva woman to upstage a star that has such fame and respect in the film and music industry that she goes by just one name. Yet watching the film version of the hit Broadway show Dreamgirls, former American Idol finalist Jennifer Hudson manages to do just that to Beyonce.
Hudson and Beyonce star as two thirds of an all-girl singing group from the 60s, The Dreamettes, obviously meant to emulate Diana Ross and The Supremes. Known for her powerful voice on American Idol, you would think when Hudson was outshining Beyonce it was only when she was singing, but instead she outshone her every time they were on the screen together, singing, talking, or just putting on their wigs in the dressing room. These two are the only singers turned actors in the movie, as the rest of the cast, Anika Noni Rose, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy, are all actors turned singers in the movie.
Hudson was supposedly cast somewhat reluctantly. They thought she wasn't what they were looking for, but no matter who they tried out for that part, they always came back to the girl with the big voice from Chicago. Reportedly she even beat out the person that beat her for the title of American Idol, Fantasia Barrino. Fantasia couldn't have pulled off the part, though. It needed someone that was larger than life, and I don't mean physically. Hudson's personality fills the screen every time she appears on it. And when she sings, she brings down the house.
Foxx plays the manager of their group, and a guy that not surprisingly started out as a car salesman. While he's a really shrewd businessman, he all too soon forgets what brought him the success in the first place, and soon begins to care way more about the power and money, than friendship and family. His singers start out in bars that are so seedy and smoky, just watching it was bothering my contact lenses and making my eyes water. His goal is to get them out of there, out of the tour bus, and playing in places like Miami Beach and the Copa.
Murphy's character has one goal. Making it with Rose's character, despite the fact he's married. He plays a singer along the lines of a James Brown type, who is filled with soul, but whose sound is such a mix of gospel, soul, and R&B, that the white audiences that Foxx is coveting have a hard time connecting to him. He was great in this role; however, sometimes, especially towards the end, I felt like I was watching one of his Saturday Night Live characters.
Yet, despite the fact Foxx's motives get confused the further and further he goes with his pursuits, he was the only one that dared to see the ultimate possibilities for these performers. He was constantly pushing them in another direction, because he wanted to see the black performers break into the white music business. He wanted to see them on American Bandstand. This is after he worked hard to record and promote Eddie Murphy backed by the the Dreamettes singing a new song. It was eventually stolen by white performers who stripped the soul right out of it, and turned it into a #1 record.
While it makes us somewhat uncomfortable to think of life just forty years ago in those terms, it nonetheless was happening. Martin Luther King Jr hadn't expressed his own dream yet. In fact, once he records his I Have a Dream speech, Hudson throws it in Foxx's face, wondering why a guy that's not even singing can get his own record, and Foxx won't even put her on the B side of a record. She does this kiddingly, but it's one of those things that does have some seriousness to it.
Of course, there was no way the people making this film knew that its release day would just happen to coincide with the day the Godfather of Soul James Brown died. Yet, it's so fitting, if not downright ironic. Brown changed the face of music in so many ways, making music that would bring the races together. And that's what Foxx's character spends the entire movie doing, trying to create a sound that was innovative.
Yuddy Score: Yud -LT
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