Dreamgirls

With its uniformly unmemorable songs and shockingly subpar performances (Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar for this?), Dreamgirls is undoubtedly one of the worst mainstream musicals ever to emerge out of Hollywood. There’s little doubt that writer/director Bill Condon’s overtly familiar screenplay – which follows the rise and fall of a ’60s-era soul group – plays a significant role in the film’s downfall, as even the most dunderheaded viewer will be left rolling their eyes at the storyline’s increasingly predictable trajectory. The egregiously dark atmosphere only exacerbates the movie’s various problems, as Condon – along with cinematographer Tobias Schliessler – places the emphasis on visuals that are relentlessly smoky and downright unpleasant (even Chicago wasn’t quite this drab). Of course, such things would be fairly easy to overlook if Condon had managed to include at least one compelling character; the filmmaker instead offers up a series of one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, with Hudson’s Effie White the most obvious example of this. That Hudson offers up a seriously underwhelming performance surely doesn’t help matters, as the actress’ incompetent work ensures that Effie remains an obnoxious and entirely unsympathetic figure during the film’s disastrously overlong running time. And although the movie does improve slightly in its closing half hour, there’s just no denying that Dreamgirls is primarily nothing less than an utterly interminable piece of work.

* out of ****