The movie is even rolling as Deena becomes the lead singer, leading Curtis to comment to her mother that Deena has a certain "quality." Her mother thinks he makes her sound like a product; he likes that description better. That is the movie's single, most honest moment—a spot-on commentary of the music industry summed up in three lines of dialogue. Soon after, though, the movie gets messy. Suddenly, characters are singing while they're not performing. Effie leaves the group in what is the only nervous breakdown set to song that I can presently recall. It's a testament to Jennifer Hudson's potential as an actress that she gives the scene an emotional core despite its awkwardness. We had a hint that something like this would happen when Curtis and his crew start singing while trying to get their records played on the radio through underhanded dealings. How the movie goes from that relatively harmless moment to characters singing about family to each other while the camera spins around in a fruitless attempt to make it more visually exciting is a mystery.

If that weren't enough, the movie toys with its characters and their relationships for cheap melodramatic effect. Just as Effie leaves, the movie flash-forwards, and out of nowhere, Curtis and Deena are married. On top of that adjustment, we're expected to accept their years-long marital suffering. Condon doesn't care about these characters; they are mere playthings for the dramatics. By the end of the movie, everybody is dumping everybody. Curtis drops Early, C.C. leaves, Lorrell ditches Early, and the mortal coil abandons one character. It's too much for too little effect. It's a good thing one of the final songs tells the audience what they should be feeling, because Condon fails to connect to any of the characters. The songs, for the most part, are forgettable imitations of the genre to which they pay homage, but Condon stages the actual performance pieces effectively. He also gives the movie a polished, sometimes theatrical look. Take a scene in which the lights literally go down on Curtis as he stands despondent. It's an obvious gag, but I'm a sucker for those things. The script has some successful jokes about the business, including a knock-off of The Jackson 5 and a dorky white kid who steals one of Early's songs before it crosses over, but the reality of a segregated musical scene is downplayed to the point it becomes mere background.

Then again, anything that doesn't involve high dramatics seems relegated to the background. It's loud, with lots of pretty colors, but there's nothing holding back the melodrama or making it emotional relevant. Dreamgirls is a particularly piece of lazy storytelling within a genre that is famous, to paraphrase Shakespeare, for having lots of noise and little significance.