Although buxom Effie (Jennifer Hudson) is his lover, the businessman promotes the slim Deena (Beyonce Knowles) in her place and marries her. Deena, like Diana Ross, is beautiful and slim, but has a much narrower vocal range than Effie.
Tough, uncompromising Effie angrily retreats to her old world in the Detroit ghetto and becomes a single mother, painfully retaining her integrity as the Dreams go on to world fame. Very soon, in one of those familiar Hollywood montages, the Dreams are on the cover of Time, Life and Newsweek.
Meanwhile, James Early struggles to keep the faith as a politically committed soul singer. It's familiar stuff, but handled with immense panache and there are strong theatrical moments such as Effie walking angrily out of a recording studio at night only to find herself on the streets during the 1967 Detroit riots.
Most of the numbers are performed on the stages of theaters, nightclubs and on TV, and the girls strutting their stuff, their three pairs of wiggling buttocks filling the wide screen, is a sight to behold. The first song not to be sung as part of an act or in a studio doesn't come until around 45 minutes into the film and, like all the dramatic numbers, it's a song of anxiety, pain, doubt and rejection. It is always easy, however, to distinguish between the determinedly commercial music that Deena's Svengali promotes and the authentic black soul music the film presents as a countervailing artistic force.
Eddie Murphy's James Early is the best thing he has done for more than 20 years — since 48 Hrs. and Trading Places — with a maturity and depth of feeling he's rarely shown before. Beyonce is an entrancing presence, but the movie's big discovery is Jennifer Hudson as honest, uncompromising Effie. She's marvelous, yet her name appears in small, almost illegible print on the posters.
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