Dynamic film with great performances, stunning sets, and gorgeous costumes. Now only if the songs were better.
Dreamgirls (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:198
Fresh:154
Rotten:44
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: Dreamgirls' simple characters and plot hardly detract from the movie’s real feats: the electrifying performances and the dazzling musical numbers.
Theatrical Release:02-02-2007
Synopsis: In 1960s Detroit, a good night onstage can get you noticed but it won't get your song played on the radio. Here, a new kind of music is on the cusp of being born – a sound with roots buried deep in... In 1960s Detroit, a good night onstage can get you noticed but it won't get your song played on the radio. Here, a new kind of music is on the cusp of being born – a sound with roots buried deep in the soul of Detroit itself, where songs are about more than what's on the surface, and everyone is bound together by a shared dream. Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx) is a car salesman aching to make his mark in the music business – to form his own record label and get its sound heard on mainstream radio at a time when civil rights are still only a whisper in the streets. He just needs the angle, the right talent, the right product to sell. Late for their stint in a local talent show, The Dreamettes – Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles), Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose), and lead singer Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) – show up in their cheap wigs and homemade dresses, rehearsing songs and steps by Effie's brother, C.C. (Keith Robinson), with hopes that talent and sheer desire will break them out of the only life that seems available to them. They're young. They're beautiful. They're just what Curtis is looking for. All they have to do is trust him. James "Thunder" Early (Eddie Murphy) is a pioneer of the new Detroit sound, spellbinding audiences all along the "Chitlin' Circuit" with his electrifying blend of soul and rock 'n' roll. Curtis finesses The Dreamettes a gig singing backup for Early, and suddenly, for all of them, the gulf between what they want and what they can have draws closer for the first time. Curtis launches the girls as a solo act, rechristening them The Dreams, knowing in his gut that success lies not with the soulful voice of Effie, but with the demure beauty and malleable style of Deena – despite their history…and Curtis' promises. Deena is ready to step into the spotlight, even as Effie fades away. As a new musical age dawns, Curtis' driving ambition pushes this one-time family to the forefront of an industry in the throes of music revolution. But when the lights come up and the curtains part, they hardly recognize who they've become. Their dreams are finally there for the taking, but at a price that may be too heavy for their hearts to bear. The groundbreaking Tony Award-winning Broadway phenomenon comes to life as an all-new motion picture adaptation written and directed by Academy Award®® winner Bill Condon. A Laurence Mark production presented by DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures, "Dreamgirls," is a compelling story of love and loyalty, fame and betrayal that tracks the struggle, sacrifices and triumphs of a group of outsiders carrying their landmark sound into mainstream America in the 1960s and '70s. --© DreamWorks [More]
Starring: Beyonce Knowles, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson
Starring: Beyonce Knowles, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Danny Glover, Keith Robinson, Hinton Battle, Anika Noni Rose, John Lithgow, Sharon Leal, Tom Voth, Robert Cicchini
Director: Bill Condon
Director: Bill Condon
Screenwriter: Bill Condon
Producer: Laurence Mark
Composer: Henry Krieger, Stephen Trask
Studio: DreamWorks Distribution LLC
Reviews for Dreamgirls
However, most of the great musicals from the 1930s and '40s did too, and it was the music and dancing which saved them. This is the case here, as well.
It's a laugh-out-loud moment when a hot R&B song is forever entombed as Pat Boone-style fluff. But that same sort of sanitization and sterilization has been applied to this film. Scrubbed clean for a shiny glow, most of the soul is gone from the story.
It feels superficial -- though I admit it's a pretty rousing and toe-tapping kind of superficiality.
If my movie reviews had headlines, this one's would be: "A Star is Born." More like a Supernova.
I can say without reservation that Dreamgirls is a crowd-pleasing film and mean it only in the most positive of senses.
Here's a movie that's truly firing on all cylinders and never faltering.
An "American Idol" rejectee with no prior screen experience, [Jennifer Hudson's] presence in this film is itself the stuff that musical dreams are made of.
Condon knew what he wanted, and got it: a smooth, shiny showbiz fable.
This story blazes through the Detroit sound, the ’60s and ’70s, discrimination, betrayal, greed, pride, loyalty and redemption and so much more. It does it with songs and it does it exactly right.
A movie musical that certainly knows how to carry a tune, but is missing a heart.
The movie's barely good, but the music? The voices? The soul?! Lord, have mercy.
Even beyond its clichéd story and familiar characters, Dreamgirls gets stuck at its most broadly representational level, exploiting even as it means to expose, repeating even as it might have offered something new, something that would give you a r
Who knew Diana Ross was a saint forced by a puppet master to be a star? For the first time in his career, Eddie Murphy acts! and Jennifer Hudson steals the movie.
This year's Brokeback Mountain in a lot of ways, Dreamgirls is the movie over which it's impolite not to fawn.
a highly enjoyable, frequently rousing musical soap opera... undeniably entertaining and -- especially when Hudson takes center stage -- even electrifying.
A lot of razzle-dazzle with very little soul...this largely novice cast lacks the necessary force of personality to breathe life into their underwritten stock figures. The lone exception is an electrifying Eddie Murphy.
Fulfills the ecstatic promise inherent in all musicals -- that life can be dissolved into song and dance -- but it does so without relinquishing the toughest estimate of how money and power work in the real world that song and dance leave behind.
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