Girls Who Dream

I saw Dreamgirls (the movie) a couple of weeks ago. I saw Dreamgirls (the Broadway musical) decades ago. My memory of the Broadway version is one of my prime pleasures; to recall the drama and the shear theatricality of it still makes me smile. The movie version only made me smile intermittently and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I might have dredged up some inner-racism, or something, that I hadn’t been aware of before. I mulled and I mulled and have concluded that I’m not in the least racist; I’m just an old coot living in the past. As I recall Dreamgirls on Broadway was all about ambition and sacrifice and a “What I did for love” type of transcendence. Yes, a Chorus Line for black Americans…but also a universal storyline we could all relate to. The movie version, although harking back to the glory days of Motown, has a 21st Century snappishness to it that seems, to me, an anachronism. What I didn’t like was the attitudinal sameness of all the women. The insouciance of the performances was right out of WB African-American sitcoms…and I suppose that’s where my semi-racism shows up. That head bobbing, finger waving, don’t-fuck-with-me-bitch schtick that is so common in the last few years with black women has become a cliché and that’s what puzzled me and why I felt uncomfortable.

It’s a good movie and it will win some Academy Awards (I hope) but it’s not the movie I anticipated and wanted to see made from what is, of course, only a memory. Jennifer Hudson does her best and deserves the hype being showered upon her, but I can never, ever, forget Jennifer Holiday and her transcendent performance, oh, those many years ago. That’s the problem, of course, reality never does live up to expectations. FYI, I’ve never been an Eddie Murphy fan and his performance in Dreamgirls did nothing to change that.