Nowadays Detroit is a smoking crater destroyed by state power. But once it was a driving force in the economy, famous for two things, car production and music. The Detroit soul sound is what is celebrated in this story about a fictitious group of black female singers, working their way up the ladder of success in the business.
During a contest, three female singers, "The Dreamettes", are discovered by a small record label. They are hired to sing backup for a bigger name, Jimmy Early, played and sung by Eddie Murphy. As time goes and they prove their worth, Early is slowly falling out of favor with the audience. Then the girls are offered to start their own act with a recording contract. The lead singer in the group, falls in the love with the manager Curtis, played by Foxx. But he is a player and when they start to hit the big time, he exchanges her with a younger and prettier, but more mainstream sounding girl, Deena, played by Beyoncé. This could break the friendships and love relationships of everyone.
First of all i am very impressed with the level of quality of the actors singing. Eddie Murphy is actually a pretty good singer and so is Jamie Foxx. Except for Beyoncé, who is a well known artist, the rest of the group, does a great job at their performances. The movie is burdened by a very predictable and boring plot. The love stories are so formulaic it hurts. The male characters Curtis and Early, who help them get ahead in the business is generally potraid as jerks, that are only interested in exploiting these "helpless girls". I am tired of this repeated ridiculing and bashing of men in media. But a lot has been done to create new music material to make the story believable and able to stand on its own feet and not become a pseudo documentary of real life artists. There are also several scenes where the actors, who are not singers in the story, sing their part and it becomes a sort of part musical. This works well at times, like in the first part where they rehearse for their first performance with Early and the room suddenly changes into the stage where they have to perform. At other times it feels very cheesy and pretentious. I liked the first part quite a lot, but as the story tries to progress, it becomes more and more stereotypical and ridiculous. The time-span is described by the changes in hairstyles and clothing, but they do not really change emotionally. The characters are not believable, except for Curtis maybe, but Early is just too much of a stereotypical, drug addicted, has-been singer.
The plot is predictable and the stories are not really interesting. It plays on stereotypical roles for performers, record companies and managers and so on. I think it is meant to be a girls night out feelgood movie, with a slight feminist twist, and at that it succeeds. On a general scale it does not hold up, despite good singing and pretty stagesettings and performances. Good performances cannot help a bad story, as well as a mediocre actor can step up to the task of a good story.
Rating: 4/10
