Hollywood Hues
Melody of life
A catchy, delightful and zesty musical with adept editing, Dreamgirls is great entertainment, 
writes Ervell E. Menezes

Beyonce Knowles, Anika Noni Rose and Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls

Swaying their hips, wiggling their bottoms and melting to the rhythm and the beat Dreamgirls is here with soul, rap, rock ‘n’ roll and the lot and with it the stories of artistes and their relationships with men who call the shots. It’s about giving breaks to budding talents but wanting something in return. It’s show business all over again.

Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) is a car salesman with plans to make it big in the music business, to form his own record label and get it heard on mainstream radio at a time when civil rights was only a whisper; that was the 1960s, the place Detroit. And he cashes in on the talent of the Dreamettes—Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles), Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) and lead singer Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) rehearsing songs and steps by Effie’s brother C.C. (Keith Robinson).

Effie doesn’t do backups. "I don’t do aahs and oohs," she says but has to when Curtis changes their name to Dreamgirls with Deena as the lead singer. "Success lies not with the soulful voice of Effie, but with the demure beauty and malleable style of Deena," he says and at once makes a play for her. So it is the cause of much jealousy but the three Dreamgirls stick together in their own interest.

Lorrell has a fling with James Thunder Early (Eddie Murphy), a "force of nature". Nothing can hold him back when he’s performing and that electricity bleeds into his personal life. Heavily on drugs, success is getting the better of him. Then there is Marty (Danny Glover), a senior in the business, much respected. How the careers of the three girls keep changing is the core of this delightful and zesty musical.

It is catchy but may be one has yet to get into the rhythm of black music, though much of it is believed to have been hijacked by the whites, including Elvis Presley.

Director Bill Condon does well to blend the personal with the stage performances and the cutting and editing is so adept, one is at a loss to know what’s happening, and where but it’s great entertainment, at times predictable with a string of songs at regular intervals. That Effie’s fortunes nosedive is academic but the story covers a whole gamut of emotions with poetic justice eventually showing up. There’s also a clever twist at the end which puts the world of show business quite in perspective—dog eat dog and the higher you go the harder you fall.

For someone making her debut, Jennifer Hudson is phenomenal and richly deserves the Best Supporting Actress Oscar she won this year and she is joined by an excellent all-black cast, led by Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Anika Noni Rose and Eddie Murphy, who after his disguises in The Nutty Professor seems to continue in that sort of disguise. In fact one can recognise his voice before his face. Danny Glover also puts in a brief appearance, a long absence since his Lethal Weapons cop role. So Dreamgirls is a "must see" for musicals aficionados, it’s as much about music as about life.

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