'Dreamgirls,' not so much a dream

Rating: PG-13
Directed by: Bill Condon
Running Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

If you plan on going to see Dreamgirls, you're walking right into an accident. Run away, run far away.

As a parallel on the Supremes, the film is set in 1960s Detroit and is about three women trying to break into the music industry. It is adapted from a Broadway musical and exposes what goes on behind the stage.

The film is a mix between Rent and Ray, but a bad mix at that. It quickly loses it's potential, going in about ten different directions. About thirty minutes into the movie, it all of a sudden turns into a musical. What the hell? Someone grab Simon Cowell.

Musicals are fine, but bad musicals are like a sledgehammer to the head. The film Chicago is an amazing musical; it doesn't make the same mistake of having characters sing flat dialogue as Dreamgirls does. And just about everything in this movie is flat.

The characters are underdeveloped. I really can't tell you that much about each character. They all have wooden dialogue. Someone fire the screenwriters. And don't even get me started on Jamie Foxx.

The screenplay is where most of the problems are, proving that adaptations are not as easy as they seem. The script moves along at an uneven pace and has too many assumptions. One second the girls are nobodies and the next they are famous. The characters also fall in and out of love between takes.

The one positive aspect of this film is that it is led by a powerful performance by Jennifer Hudson. She can convey emotion when she sings, much more so than Beyonce. But she can't hold the entire movie together the way Johnny Depp does for Pirates of the Caribbean.

If you still want to go see this film, start lowering your expectations. This one is off pitch.