We waited in the rain for 45 minutes to get into Dreamgirls at the Uptown, and it's one of the best all-around movies - big screen entertainment that sweeps you along in its long but swift view of Motown, pop music, cities and fashion since the 1950s. It was great except for:
- a strange kind of demonization of prefab pop music that also comes off as a somewhat racist idolization of soul music as more "natural" and "real".
- when it broke into balladry out of nowhere (and Jamie Foxx sang).
- the end. While I don't care that it's not true to history, the history may make a better story.
Other than this, it was awesome. There is so much history here, Jennifer Hudson is as amazing as everybody says, Beyonce is great, gracious, graceful and understated (and a national inspiration), Jamie Foxx is classic, Eddie Murphy just reminds me of SNL but the early musical numbers are wonderful, the dancing is ecstatic and precise all at once. The directing is clean, loves details, and is at times dreamlike. Some of the songs are weak, but so are some of the songs they were based on. The ones that stick will last forever. The biggest movie since Titanic.
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