Dreamgirls (2006)
Directed by Bill Condon
A trio of female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way.
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What critics compared Dreamgirls to
As fans of the musical might expect, the real piece de resistance is when Hathaway sings “I Dreamed a Dream,” one of those showstopping moments on par with Jennifer Hudson singing “I Am Telling You” in “Dreamgirls.”
As when Jennifer Hudson sang And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going in Dreamgirls , it's a bravura performance that makes you want to stand up and start applauding.
(Considering that Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar for one good song in Dreamgirls, it's hard to see how Hathaway won't do the same thing thanks to "I Dreamed a Dream," which is a powerhouse tune she nails.)
Dreamgirls (2006) managed $155m internationally but it’s the best of a bunch that includes The Phantom Of The Opera (2004) with $154m, and Sweeney Todd (2007) with $152m.
That moment is the implosive equivalent of the house Jennifer Hudson brought down in “Dreamgirls.”
Working from a screenplay by Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) and Evan Spiliotopoulos (“The Huntsman: Winter’s War”) that mostly sticks with the 1991 story, director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) channels the virtues of classic Hollywood musicals.
Director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls,” “The Twilight Saga”) combines romance with the broad tropes of Broadway musical comedy.
Directed by the inarguably talented Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls,” “Gods and Monsters,” the final two “Twilight” movies) in a spirit of demented visual rococo, “Beauty and the Beast” eventually achieves liftoff after 90-odd minutes of exertion.
Director Bill Condon (who previously did Dreamgirls ) can’t squeeze any terror out of the Beast’s first appearance or the furniture in the castle coming to life.
Directed by movie-musical veteran Bill Condon (Dreamgirls and the script for Chicago), Beauty and the Beast is a movie that can’t quite figure out what it wants to say that it didn’t already say back in 1991 — when it was the first full-length animated film to be nominated for a best picture Oscar (and this was when there were only five nominees in the category, too!).
As scripted by TV writer Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City, The Big C) and Oscar winner Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), the film pivots around what should be a foolproof central character: Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891).
Hugh Jackman stars as a fantasy version of circus impresario P.T. Barnum: The story, written by Bill Condon (of Dreamgirls and Gods and Monsters fame) and Jenny Bicks (who has written largely for TV and was a producer of Sex and the City) presents Barnum as a kindly savior to human misfits, a man who taught tattooed oddballs and conjoined twins how to love and accept themselves.
As for the script by TV vet Jenny Bicks and Dreamgirls writer-director Bill Condon, it offers only pop psychology in its look at P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) as a troubled overachiever and a politically correct framework that’s ultimately at odds with the more troubling aspects of its leading character and the time in which he lived.
In loosely adapting for the big screen the life of famed showman P. T. Barnum, director Michael Gracey (making a dazzling directorial debut) and screenwriters Jenny Bicks (2014's " Rio 2 ") and Bill Condon (2006's " Dreamgirls ") have crafted a pair of quite literally soaring love stories set against the backdrop of the museum-turned-sideshow business Barnum created.
Jenny Bicks (HBO's 'Sex and the City') and Bill Condon's ("Chicago," "Dreamgirls") screenplay stretches the truth and condenses time, Gracey's overly modern interpretation wearing its message of diversity and acceptance on its sleeve.
Stone gets several especially juicy moments in the spotlight, none more so than her show-stopping eleventh-hour ballad "Audition (Fools Who Dream)," so purely and powerfully performed it could very well earn her rapturous awards notice like "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" did for Jennifer Hudson in 2006's " Dreamgirls " and "I Dreamed a Dream" did for Anne Hathaway in 2012's " Les Misérables ."
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It's Not Jessica Chastain's Norbit One of the Hollywood's enduring urban legends is that Eddie Murphy's dual role as henpecked husband and plus-sized monster wife in the alleged comedy Norbit -- which opened three weeks before the Academy Awards -- cost him his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Dreamgirls.
Erivo, who has an easier handle on the Wicked Witch of the West’s serious side than her cackle, is giving surely the best movie-musical vocal turn since Jennifer Hudson in “Dreamgirls.”
That's also when Condon, who occasionally seems overwhelmed by the sheer bigness of the production, stops trying to wow us with one high-energy production number after another and recaptures in a few key scenes the exquisite intimacy of his two nonmusical biopics, Kinsey and Gods and Monsters.
Starting with its dream cast, led by Jamie Foxx and Beyonce, Dreamgirls is a movie that has everything: a blazing new star in Jennifer Hudson, a riveting, revitalized Eddie Murphy, a hot-lick score by Henry Krieger and the late Tom Eyen, a timely story about how music can sell its soul to greed and compromise, and a dynamo of a director and screenwriter in Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Kinsey).
This film adaptation was written and directed by Bill Condon, who also made Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, and also wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winning Chicago.
Enter Bill Condon , beloved director of Kinsey and Gods and Monsters and, most importantly, writer of Chicago âand possessor of all the aforementioned prerequisites.
Second is writer-director Bill Condon, a student of human desire (Kinsey, Gods and Monsters; the screenplay for Chicago) who injects the film with explosive pop lust.
The film, adapted by writer-director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Kinsey) from the 1981 Broadway musical by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen, rushes so quickly from one song to the next—almost all of which are performed in a recording studio or before an audience—that it's almost a concert movie, and the "dramatic" bits that come between the songs are little more than padding or connective tissue.
In her first role since her Oscar-winning turn in 2006's " Dreamgirls ," Jennifer Hudson is an earnest natural as Louise, though one has to wonder why Carrie needs an assistant so badly now that she doesn't appear to write much and has exorbitant amounts of free time.
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Directors such as Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) and Adam Shankman (Hairspray) have a much greater knowledge of film techniques, and they did a vastly superior job of using techniques to make their musicals feel less stage-y and more cinematic.
Cleo King (2006's " Dreamgirls ") is a comic standout in her one-scene cameo as a no-nonsense cop, and Danny McBride (2008's " Drillbit Taylor ") is a delirious force of nature as Saul's drug dealer friend Red, who miraculously survives throughout despite any number of extreme injuries.