Dreamgirls

After seeing this on Friday night with my parents and a family friend, some thoughts crossed my mind:

• No one expected this to be a MUSICAL, like a real MUSICAL, where the characters sing their lines and all about how they are feeling right that minute. The first communal freakout moment came when Curtis is all "boot that Effie! She got back, and too much sass! I'm puttin' Deena singin' lead!" and Effie is all running onstage in a huff and then everyone is all hugging her and singing We Are A Family. Groan, but what did you expect? It was never billed as an accurate doco-type account of Miss Ross and the Supremes. Things got worse by the time Jennifer Hudson started stomping around Jamie Foxx in her flat shoes and little gold suit screaming about how she's not going. Slightly harrowing by the end of the song: you could also hear the sigh of relief. Whenever we heard the tell-tale chord and the slow zoom out to mid-shot that signalled another of Jennifer's vocal showpieces, the giggles and the groans started. Plebiscites. No wonder musicals get a bad rap. It may have been a dorky musical with some annoying bits and too much Hudson, but it was done well.



• Hair. I gotta buy me a wig. A big one, like Dusty Springfield, and wear it everywhere, including to the fruit barn on Saturday morning.



• Who was Hudson paying / sleeping with to get superstar billing on this film? Talk about a showpig. It was the whole "and introducing... Aileen Quinn as Annie!" all over again. Yes, she was the lead, but we'll just have to wait and see whether the scraping and bowing pay off, or whether she will choke and become another "couldabeen" Idol reject.



• There should have been more scenes with Little Michael in them. The alternate-reality Jackson Five were... interesting.



• There's lots of talk going around about Diana Ross getting huffy about the accuracy of the story, and Mary whatshername stating publicly that the film is much closer to the true story than anyone knows, but what about Berry Gordy? Is he all that impressed with the portrayal of Curtis as a backstabbing, evil, manipulative, misogynistic money-grubber?



• Gotta git me some sequinned costume outfits to go with the wig.