Pretty Goes with Pretty: Dreamgirls: And I Am Telling You

Since Dreamgirls got snubbed for best picture last week, numerous journalists, critics, and industry folk have been intepreting it as some sort of sign of the apocalypse. Dreamgirls didn't get nominated? Have you looked outside the window to see if the sky is still blue? The grass still green? The latest in a long (and growing) line of articles investigating this catastrophe comes in today's New York Times. But wait! Don't bother reading the article, I can spare you litany of excuses. I saw Dreamgirls this weekend and explanation is actually quite simple: this movie stinks.

Jennifer Hudson was the best thing about the movie, yes. And her rendition of the "And I am Telling You I Am Not Going" was the highlight of the film, yes. And she deserves the Oscar over the ten-year-old from Little Miss Sunshine, yes.

But let's talk plot: cliche, cliche, cliche. Let's talk Eddie Murphy: not bad, but grossly overrated. Let's talk songs: except for maybe three--the aforementioned "I Am Telling You...," "Fake Your Way to the Top," and the "Dreamgirls" theme song--they were all indistingiushable. Not to mention the entire second half is ballad after ballad after ballad, thus killing all momentum. Nevermind that this is a musical about Motown, and there were perhaps three songs total that could lay claim to that sound. And a major red flag, by the way, is that this movie begins in Motown but ends in disco--meaning that the songs are predestined to descend in quality. Great trajectory for a musical. The movie begins at one of pop music's greatest heights and ends at one of its lowest depths. No wonder the climax hits at the middle and the last hour is sheer drudgery.

The way the songs were used was inconsistent, in a frustrating way--sometimes they're sung dialogue, sometimes they're soundtrack to a montage, sometimes they're a natural part of the story, but they're none of these things frequently enough to actually serve the story in a helpful way. And where was the performance? Only a few songs involved people actually performing while they sang. Even when the song was part of a stage show, the performances (barring Murphy's James Brownisms) were wooden. More often, Bill Condon seemed to get bored of the song and instead chose to use that opportunity to move the maudlin plot forward via montage. In one fell swoop he manages to take the steam out of the song by not letting the audience enjoy it, and drains the plot of any nuance by not allowing the actors to do anything but the broadest of strokes, mute on screen as a visual cliche does their work for them.

Most of these flaws seem to be inherent to the original play. Curiously, though, and most frustrating, is that critics have noted the weakness of the songs and the predictability of the Behind the Music-esque rise, fall, and redemption plot. But they've been noting these things as if they were a minor flaws. How can you rave about a musical if the music not very good? If the songs aren't that good, the plot is cliche, the dialogue nothing special, and musical performances also not terribly great... can two supporting actors--one, really: Hudson--really make this movie that necessary to so many people?

The answer is no. There is no great mystery as to why this movie got snubbed at the Oscars. The great mystery is how it got so many nominations (and wins) elsewhere.