You know when your life is the equivalent of the “think of things, come on brain” meme? Cause I’ve been stressed out and it’s given me no incentive to be a coherent communicator in any way. Luckily HBO Max is letting go of this movie at the end of the month so I’m being forced to be creative on a timeline.
Similar to The Sapphires, Dreamgirls is about a woman soul group who strikes it big during the 1960s. I realize Dreamgirls was a Broadway show for years before the adaptation, and it was created before The Sapphires, but I couldn’t help but to compare the two because I enjoyed The Sapphires and really struggled to get invested in this movie. Story beats include:
- The girl group participates in a talent contest
- Their performance attracts a manager that forces them to change their name and their roles within the group
- One of the members falls in love with the manager
- The group becomes successful
Where it differs is in the second act, where The Dreams’ manager becomes selfish and corrupted and the girls liberate themselves from him. I’d like to think Chris O’Dowd’s character was legit and him and Gina lived happily ever after, so I’m going to end the comparisons here.
Effie (Jennifer Hudson), Deena (Beyoncé), and Lorrell (Disney Princess Anika Noni Rose) are three young women in Detroit looking for their big break. They intend to sing Effie’s brother C.C.’s original song in a talent contest at the Detroit Theater, and although they lose, Effie’s voice (and ass) attracts the attention of Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx). Curtis is a Cadillac salesman who just happens to know music manager Marty Madison (Danny Glover) and decides he wants to work his own way into the entertainment business. Curtis convinces Marty to ask the girls to sing backup for his client Jimmy Early (Eddie Murphy), a veteran artist who has driven off his other backup singers by carrying on affairs with them. They offer the girls the opportunity to perform with him that night and later accompany him on a 10-week tour. At first, Effie rebuffs the offer, viewing it as a long-term trap that would prevent them from ever being featured front-and-center. Beyoncé, who is wearing wayyyy too much foundation on her face in an effort to make herself look plain, convinces Effie it’s in their best interest, and they head over to the gig.
While Jimmy initially protests against having 3 backup singers (he insists he only works with two, which like, when has that EVER been the case for any musical artist ever??), he changes his mind once he lays eyes on 17-year-old Lorrell and concedes to working with the newly branded Dreamettes. Lorrell is smitten with Jimmy immediately, and when the girls leave to go on tour as a permanent part of Jimmy’s act, she both constantly rebuffs and submits to Jimmy’s advances, ignoring the protests of literally everyone around them.
Curtis tries to convince Marty and Jimmy that his career is stagnating because he needs a new sound, and oh hey, Curtis just happens to know this guy C.C. who can write new songs for him. Marty is uninterested, but Jimmy hears The Dreamettes sing C.C.’s new song “Cadillac Car”, and it’s off to the races. Things start to pick up for the gang as the single gains steam, until some milquetoast white boy re-records the song and usurps all the radio airplay Jimmy Early was previously enjoying. Curtis, pissed by this new development and lack of proper recourse, decides to sell his entire fleet of cars in order to earn the bribe money to pay DJs to play his musical artists on the radio, and additionally founds his own studio, Rainbow Records. This tactic works, and Jimmy’s new song “Steppin’ to the Bad Side” lands them an engagement at the Apollo Theater. This new-found success leads to a fallout between Jimmy and Marty, as Curtis has started booking Jimmy gigs at white clubs that Marty couldn’t land before. Marty leaves Rainbow and Curtis moves forward with his new fleet of artists.
Meanwhile, Effie is anxious that The Dreamettes haven’t cut a solo record yet. C.C. writes her a song, and when she performs it for Curtis (who is now her boyfriend for some reason), he tells them to patiently wait to release it because it’s not the right time. Jimmy plays in Miami, but his personality proves to be too much for the racist white people, which forces Curtis’ hand to promote the girls to their own solo act called The Dreams. This comes with a catch, however, as C.C. and Curtis ask Effie to step down and let Deena sing lead because she has a “lighter sound” that will allow them to cross over into the pop charts. Effie accuses Curtis of not featuring her because she’s fat, but he counters that she knows how sexy he thinks she is, and I just roll my eyes because Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Hudson have absolutely no chemistry and this all looks awkward as fuck. Eventually she’s guilted into submitting because it’s best for the “family” or whatever, and Deena steps-up into the spotlight.
The Dreams quickly become a worldwide sensation, and Jimmy resorts to drugs to cope with the dip in his career and his loss of a now-famous jetsetting Lorrell. Effie similarly is frustrated with her new situation as she’s seemingly incapable of taking a backseat to Deena’s less-powerful voice. Effie throws tantrums and walks out of recording sessions, performances, and rehearsals. Everyone quickly becomes sick of her shit, and arrange for Michelle (Sharon Leal) to replace her. They choose to reveal this to Effie before The Dreams’ big New Year’s Eve performance, and right after Effie discovers she hasn’t been feeling well because she’s pregnant. She reacts reasonably to being ambushed, fired and dumped at the same time.
Ok, so, like, don’t kill me, but I’m kind of lukewarm on Jennifer as an actress in this movie. Granted, Jamie Foxx gives her nothing, as every line delivery is absorbed by his placid face… I digress. Her singing is phenomenal, but she never looked that comfortable dancing in these numbers, either. I wasn’t convinced of her Oscar win until this song came up. “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” is the only reason to watch this movie. You have to suspend your belief that Curtis and Effie have an epic romance, but good god, does Jennifer Hudson sell this. I saw this movie when it first came out and I barely remembered any of it except Jennifer belting out this song. I can’t watch this without crying, I love her voice so much. It’s what made me so angry when I watched Cats and was disappointed with “Memory”, because I know she’s capable of so much more. But this movie rightfully catapulted Jennifer into the public consciousness more so than American Idol ever did, and I can’t wait to see her in Respect because I’m sure she’s going to knock it out of the park.
After about a 9-year time jump, Jennifer is jettisoned back to Detroit and we’re treated to a lot more Beyoncé. Beyoncé is unbelievably charismatic when she performs on stage, and her years as the lead singer and history of replacing members in her real-life group Destiny’s Child made her perfect for this role on paper. Deena continues to tour with The Dreams, marries Curtis, and struggles in her relationship to have her opinions considered. Curtis is uninterested in having a child, and Deena’s attempts at advocating for a film role on a Dick Solomon and Jim Halpert production are sabotaged by her husband. His control over her life is all-encompassing, and any deviation from his plans for her career or her life is viewed as a personal betrayal.
This extends to Jimmy, C.C., and the other Dreams as well. Any move they try to make that doesn’t fit within Curtis’ vision is immediately rebuffed and corrected at the expense of everyone’s hard work and mental health. High as fuck on heroin, Jimmy acts out on stage in retaliation to being constantly sidelined, and Curtis severs their partnership. Jimmy’s affair with Miss Tiana is revealed to his wife shortly after the show concludes, and feeling as he’s got nowhere to go, he shacks up in a hotel and unfortunately dies of an overdose. Curtis, being a comic book villain at this point, doesn’t feel any guilt for his role in Jimmy’s death, and when C.C. decides to quit because he can’t stand Curtis anymore, Curtis takes the opportunity to remind Michelle, C.C.’s now-girlfriend, she’s under contract and can’t leave with him.
Even Effie’s attempts to earn a living with Marty as her new manager are stomped on once Curtis finds out that C.C. is writing her material. Rainbow pulls their own re-recording stunt by forcing The Dreams to reimagine Effie’s moderate local hit “One Night Only” as a disco song. Like, sir, why do you care other than just to be petty and spiteful? That said, the dance version is kind of fire and better than the original, but it’s the *principle* of the thing.
When Deena discovers the origin of their new song, she decides to take her husband down from the inside. In the long-standing tradition of a musical adaption vying for a “Best Original Song” Oscar, Beyoncé was given a song written for the movie to illustrate her new-found independence, “Listen”, and she knocks out of the park… as Beyoncé. Not Deena.
I think part of the problem for me is that I never saw Deena, I only saw Beyoncé. I don’t know if that’s because I am so used to seeing her headline a girl group in real life, or if she’s not that great of an actress. I wouldn’t discount her acting ability however, as I saw her in Cadillac Records belting out “I’d Rather Go Blind”, and I didn’t have the same issues. Beyoncé wasn’t nominated for her portrayal as Etta James even though her performance in that was *much better* than Dreamgirls, probably because the film bombed. Her rendition of “At Last” snagged her a gig singing it at President Obama’s inaugural ball, which pissed the real Etta James off, presumably because she was unnerved Beyoncé was absorbing her life… but anyway. Beyoncé lost that Best Original Song Oscar to a B-side Melissa Etheridge song for Al Gore’s global warming documentary, and then was nominated for Best Original Song for “Be Alive” this year only to lose to Billie Eilish. We all acknowledge Beyoncé is the GOAT, but somehow always fail to reward her for it. We have whole generations of people belting out “I am alone at a crossroads, I’m not at home in my own home,” at karaoke and Beyoncé somehow still doesn’t have an Academy Award.
Deena gives Marty and C.C. evidence of Curtis’ decade-long grift against his investors, and suddenly everyone now has a problem with Curtis bribing DJs, presumably because they’re not directly benefitting from it. Instead of letting this scrub get arrested, which is what they should have done, the group blackmail Curtis into financing Effie’s new career, ending The Dreams’ contract, and arranging a farewell tour. At their final performance together, the 4 women say goodbye to their fans, and Curtis finally realizes he has a child and that maybe Effie wasn’t faking her illness 10 years before. The end.
While I found the vocal performances in this movie to be stellar, I wasn’t all that invested in the story and found my mind wandering and nit-picking aspects of a perfectly competent movie. This mostly happened during the several times the cast was sing-yelling at each other cause I found it tedious, and C.C.’s insistence his lyrics were deep and meaningful when they were truly the most basic shit I’d ever heard. Repeat watches of Dreamgirls have softened my opinion on it, however, so even if it’s sort of boring, at least I can appreciate the work and care that was put into this adaptation.