The STE |
02-21-2007 09:39 PM |
Dreamgirls, and why it sucked
Okay, I freely admit that I don't like musicals. And apparently it's a fact that has stuck in people's minds, because I've seen at least one uninitiated reference to it in another thread. But my anti-musical bias has nothing to do with why Dreamgirls is an over-hyped, overrated, bloated, unfocused, and for the most part boringly acted load.
First, it can't keep track of what kind of musical it is. Sometimes it's a straightforward, realistic, stage-performance oriented musical. But then, people suddenly burst into song for no reason. It's very distracting, and only serves to highlight the main problem I have with musicals, which is the random bursting into song. People rag on pornos for the random transitions into the sex scenes, but at least people fuck in real life. Anyways, the movie completely lacks focus with regards to the musical numbers. And a lot of the musical numbers are exactly alike, or just bleed into other musical numbers. And most of them are boring.
Too long. Too many plots going on at once, the different stories are way unorganized, or uninteresting, or flat out unnecessary. Did anybody who saw this movie actually care about Eddie Murphey banging that one singer chick? Or Beyoncé's movie career? The only good that came from the movie subplot was Krasinski got some screen time. And, to go back to the musical numbers, they could have easily cut 10 of them and been alright. 30 is too many. Hell, Jesus Christ Superstar was less than a half hour shorter, had 26 songs (some of them pretty short), but had no talking parts. This has 4 more songs, the songs are longer, plus the speaking parts, this movie felt at least an hour longer than it was. It just wouldn't end. And then when it did end, the ending was shitty. There is such a leap of logic at the end it's not even funny.
And the acting. Me-Di-O-Cre. One good performance, and one good performance of an unlikable character. Know what? Thank the Prime Designer for Eddie Murphey. He may only have existed as a plot device, but he livened the hell out of the scenes he was in. Even when he's a sad coke head, he's an entertaining sad coke head. And, yeah, Hudson was good in the movie, but I couldn't stand her character. Yeah, you're egotistical, pig-headed, and you ended up getting screwed over. Boo Fucking Hoo. Although, there was John Krasinski. But when one of your best performances is a 2-minute bit-part, you know your movie has a problem.
So, can anybody tell me WHY this movie has so much hype? I could hardly find a good point to the movie, and for months I couldn't go to a movie sight without people lining up to suck this movie's dick. I'm glad this didn't get any significant nominations aside from the supporting acting. It's a shame it'll probably win for those, though. Fuck this movie.
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