Ugly duckling

Noel Vera

After more than two decades in development hell the Broadway
musical "Dreamgirls" has finally come to the big screen, and while
it's not a great musical or even the best recent one (I'd say that
would be the "Once More, With Feeling" episode of "Buffy, the
Vampire Slayer"), it's better by far than anything we've seen in
years ("Evita," "Chicago," "Moulin Rouge," anyone?). It's a
melodrama with musical numbers; a soapy retelling of a famous
singing group's dirtiest laundry (The Supremes, and its breakout
star Diana Ross); a modest, fairly crafted revival of a moribund
genre, all rolled up in one unashamedly glitzy package. It's the
story of an ugly duckling--Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) a wannabe
pop diva with a weight problem who, instead of becoming a swan by
story's end is instead surpassed by Deena Jones (Beyonce), a real
(or at least more conventional) beauty, the classic morality tale of
surface winning out over substance, which had illusions of matters
being otherwise.

Maybe the biggest problem the show has is that it's essentially a
retelling; the songs are pastiches (that at times approach parody)
of the Motown songs they're supposed to emulate. Actually, they're
less than parodies--a parody would at least try and sound like the
source material it's making fun of; these are overblown, Hollywood
motion-picture soundtrack notions of what Motown's supposed to sound
like. Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen can try hard as they can (and they
try very hard), but the works of geniuses like Marvin Gaye are sui
generis, and therefore inimitable. The film very rarely comes to
life in its musical numbers; maybe only twice, and mostly thanks to
the actors--"What About Me?" comes to mind, and of course, the
showstopping "And I'm Telling You." Most of the time director Bill
Condon is content to cut away and go into a montage sequence that
furthers the story, instead of wasting time on the number--and for
once I'm not complaining.

Maybe the movie's second biggest problem is the ostensible lead
role, Deena Jones; granted she's supposed to be a mediocre singer
with real stage presence, couldn't they get an actress who could
sing instead of a singer who can't act? Beyonce, revealingly, looks
best in a series of photo shoots, suggesting the crystallized,
rather inflexible vision of her created by her husband/manager
Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx, channeling Berry Gordy, Jr.): she looks
nice, and her beauty can stand a variety of transformations, some of
them bizarre, but ask her to act and she gives you her impression of
a photo cut-out moving its mouth and making sounds, otherwise devoid
of life. First half of the show, she's rather wan and bland, easily
malleable in a sweet, unoffensive way; when she starts to think for
herself--fielding film offers behind her husband's back, singing the
song "Listen" (written exclusively for the film) towards the
uncomprehending Curtis, she shows a furtive vitality which, thanks
to her underwritten character, seems to come from nowhere.

The rest of the cast does much better: Jamie Foxx is at his
smoothest, seductive best as Curtis (he reminds me of the David
Selznick-type producer Kirk Douglas played in "The Bad and the
Beautiful," only here there's no last-minute justification of the
man's Machiavellian machinations); when later the castle Curtis has
built up (Motown Records in real life) starts crumbling, the shiny
veneer of his charm starts looking forlorn, even heroic. Foxx's
Curtis might be the picture's true tragic center--he made everyone
believe he was building a family when really he was building an
empire, his empire; the tragedy lies in the possibility that his
vision could have lasted longer if he had been more forthcoming.
Eddie Murphy is hilarious and in the end even moving as the
increasingly anachronistic James "Thunder" Early--in the first half
he's a heavily pomaded sleazeball celebrity; by the picture's second
half he's obsolescent, obscure, and chafing under the weight of all
the flavorless pop songs Curtis is forcing on him (when at one point
Early breaks out in an unabashed funk number, you can see the
exuberance in Murphy's face). His James Brown-like dance moves might
remind you uncomfortably of times when he would ape the great
performer during his stand-up act; but when he's asked to just stand
there reacting to his dimming fame, the camera homing in on his
careworn face, you feel the character's pathos.

Foxx's Curtis may be "Dreamgirl's" central consciousness and
Murphy's Early its nostalgic soul (something at one point Murphy
claims to have--and believe it or not, you find yourself actually
agreeing with him), but Jennifer Hudson's Effie White (a
considerably cleaned-up, nonalcoholic version of the great Florence
Ballard) is its outsized heart. Hudson's Cinderella story is famous,
of course--she was dismissed from "American Idol," and went on to
win this role (ironically, a January 2007 Vanity Fair magazine cover
of the film--echoing the musical's storyline--featured not her but
her slimmer, better-known co-stars Beyonce, Foxx, Murphy), and
eventually, one of Hollywood's gold doorstops. This wasn't the first
time the role or its players had to struggle for recognition: when
Jennifer Holliday originated the role onstage she walked out several
times during development--the first time because her character died
after the first act, the second when the Deena Jones' character's
role had been expanded in the second act. Later, Whitney Huston was
attached to play the role of Deena, but the deal stalled when she
insisted on singing some of Effie's songs, particularly "And I'm
Telling You."

I remember watching a TV show where Holliday had been allowed to
sing the song: never mind the grainy video image, or the mono sound,
or the so-so music and lyrics, it was the massive outpouring of pain-
-modulated, precisely controlled--on display that held me
enthralled. Hudson on the big screen with stereo sound can't wipe
out my memory of Holliday, but she doesn't do it dishonor--no small
thing, in my book. We go through the story with her, we come to know
her Effie--an outsized ego, much like Early (I thought they would
have been perfect for each other. Perhaps too perfect)--wrapped
around a kernel of vulnerability. When she explodes onscreen
with "And I'm Telling You" it's the tremendous passion (a passion
you've come to know during the course of the movie) that lifts it
above the overfamiliar caterwauling you hear from so many song
contests and Mariah Carey ballads.

Condon, a longtime fan of the show, helps give the unpromising
material more visual snap and conviction than it deserves. He uses
relatively simple camerawork and editing--not enough to osterize the
choreography, but enough to give it snap and sparkle. He uses
devices--the camera looking on an actor in rehearsal, cutting to a
reverse shot that turns to reveal the actor before a live audience,
in full performance--that are old, old, old, but even so your blood
throbs to the excitement generated.

Sometimes he comes up with inspired imagery: the mirrors reflecting
and multiplying the many voices speaking out against Effie during
the crucial fight scene that later become (when Deena and Curtis and
everyone else abandons her) multiple copies of Effie onstage as she
sings her big number--deprived of an audience to love her, she wills
up her own. Condon (like Hudson) pours everything into this song--
spotlights flash and blaze above Hudson as she sings, and it's a
visual metaphor for her emotions; at one point she's poised in front
of a particularly brilliant light, her shadow trailing her like
tattered sleeves, echoing Liza Minnelli singing her heart out in the
finale to "Cabaret."

If there's a flaw to Condon's approach, it's in trying to insert a
sense of historicity--paralleling the girls' rise with Martin Luther
King and the Civil Rights movement and the emergence of a black
culture--into the mix; the attempt's admirable, and I love the fluid
editing as he moves from staged to archive footage and back, but
either he didn't work on it enough or the book's too limited to
allow him to make more connections.

Condon is fond of biopics--his last film was an urgently needed
retelling (in the face of today's sexual conservatism) of the life
of taboo-breaking, frank-talking Alfred Kinsey; he'd done a biopic
on a director of a great musical--James Whale, who did "Showboat" in
1936--but one would never suspect he had a "Dreamgirls" inside him.
One wishes he'd go at it again, this time with better material.

(First published in Businessworld, 3/16/07)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)