the movieGOOMBA

4 GOOMBAS

I don't normally enjoy musicals on the silver screen. To me, musicals are meant to be left on stage. I know Grease-Travolta fans may be ready to throw stones at me for saying anything as blasphemous as that, but hear me out. Its kind of like a book becoming a movie. Sometimes its a hit or miss. With a musical, all the lines are already written out. There's already a script, and since there's already a script, it usually means that a script that was originally meant for the Broadway stage is going to attempt to orchestrate itself on film. A lot of times, it doesn't work. Not to mention that I find it really hard to get use to the singing.

Sidenote: In college, I was in class and the professor insisted on showing us a film clip to relate it to her lecture on "a hero's journey." So the room goes dark, she cues up the tape, and we see a pretty boy knight with a 1970's haircut in the woods talking to himself, and all of a sudden he breaks into song. Meanwhile, the entire class breaks into unanimous laughter. Nothing was comical about his song or even the way he sang it. We just hadn't been properly warned.

Anyway, on to Dreamgirls. Dreamgirls is about a fictitious girl group in the 1960's named the Dreamettes who hope of becoming huge stars. Curtis Taylor, played by Jamie Foxx, is their manager who proves that snakes also walk on two legs. Curtis launches the girls into stardom by having the Dreams sing back up for James "Thunder" Early, played by Eddie Murphy. Slowly the girls become more and more popular, and when it is time for the girls to open their own show,
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Effie White, Jennifer Hudson's character, is demoted while Deena Jones, Beyonce's character, sings lead.
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Obviously, this throws a schism in the group that changes everyone.

I thought that is movie was HIGHLY entertaining, but after letting the film marinate on me for a bit, I realized that it may not have been a 4 GOOMBA caliber movie. I've never seen this musical on stage, so my opinion is strictly based on what I saw on my TV. The songs were powerful and ridiculous in a fantastic way, but the story that they told just didn't inspire me. The relationship between Effie and Curtis was never really developed, and I was never quite sure what Effie saw in him. Especially after she sang that song, "And I'm Telling you I'm Not Going." Also, when the heck did Deena stop being a goody goody and start affair-ing behind Effie's back? The change in Deena's character was so abrupt that when Effie's accusation toward Deena was said out loud, I wasn't sure if there was truth behind it or if it was Effie being Effie. I very was surprised by the answered.