Original Broadway musical comparison
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Dreamgirls
Mary_Read — 11 years ago(January 15, 2015 11:46 PM)
So I'd been reading all the reviews that people wrote for Dreamgirls, and the ones who gave it a low rating were complaining about how they didn't like the characters bursting out into random singing dialogue, when they weren't singing on stage or in the studios. They also complained about how this was just a badly recycled plot about the Supremes, and how the film tried so hard to make the music sound like the era it was depicting but failed
I just cannot believe these reviews. Are they reviewing based on the film's merits alone, or do they not know that this was based on a Broadway musical from the 80s that was
inspired
by the musical artists 60s/70s?
The amount of people who haven't heard of the musical before is astounding, if this is to be true.
Now I haven't seen the original stage production before, but I did love this film adaption. For anyone here who has seen the Broadway show, does this film follow the stage musical to a T or at least close to it (unsung dialogue, Motown songs with a Broadway twist, etc.)?
If so, then the people rating the movie with low stars have no say on it. -
b-touch — 10 years ago(June 20, 2015 06:24 AM)
The first half is fairly close to Act I of the stage version, the second half deviates significantly from Act II.
The biggest difference between the two versions format-wise is that the stage version of Dreamgirls has far more recitative (sung dialogue) than the movie version does (some of the dialogue in the film in fact feels a little awkward to me because it's been slightly rewritten from its original rhyming/rhythmic patterns - example, CC and Marty's showdown with Curtis at the end of the film). Somewhere near half of the dialogue in the stage show is sung.
Also, "Cadillac Car" and "Steppin' to the Bad Side" are much bigger production numbers onstage, and the entire cast is part of both. "Steppin'" was shot this way for the film, but revised after test screenings, "Cadillac Car" was cut down during pre-production and its extra scenes/verses never filmed.
As for the sound of the music, when Kreiger and Eyen wrote the songs in the late 1970s/early 1980s, they, on purpose, avoided the Motown Sound and went for a more general R&B format (the sound of the show was one part Broadway, one part 1960s soul in general, and one part 1979-1980 R&B/disco). With this film version, some effort was made to try and please everyone by finding a common ground between what the songs sounded like in the 1980s, what the in-story numbers would have sounded like in the 1960s/1970s, and what sold records when the soundtrack was done in 2005/2006.
A perfect example is the "Dreamgirls" title song: on Broadway, it's more of a showtune with an R&B twist. In this film version, the vocal arrangement is similar, but the instrumentation has been deconstructed and revised with the distinctive drum pattern, congos, and saxophone of a mid-1960s Motown recording.
This is the version from the Original Cast Album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3n6D4a9h7A
And this is the movie version (these are both official links from the label or studio):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbNz1vlRSyM -
LiteraryLane — 10 years ago(December 04, 2015 02:12 PM)
I'm glad somebody brought this up. I have seen a video of the stage musical with the original broadway cast. I got so much life from it! As someone else said it proves everything that the movie lacks. Not many musicals translate to film very well. I have been searching around on the internet for stage vs. film comparisons of
Dreamgirls
. I found a website with a really good discussion.
Someone brought up how the filmmakers ignored the fact that the role of Lorell is very vocally challenging. Loretta Devine did a lot with that role. "Ain't No Party" is one of my favorite numbers. They all sang the hell out of those songs on the cast album. A lot of people who comment on the music in this musical do not seem to have a lot of knowledge of the concept behind it. This has been discussed numerous times, but the producers did not want it to be a carbon copy of Motown music. I am sure that's what a lot of people were expecting. People keep complaining that it doesn't sound period enough, when ironically it's more Motown in this movie than originally intended.
I still like this movie. I thought it was very entertaining when I was younger. It was also a great vehicle for Jennifer Hudson. However, my main issue with it is the fact that it's much closer the story of The Supremes than the stage show ever was. They changed the setting from Chicago to Detroit. We see the girls living in the projects just as the real Supremes did before making it big.There was never a Motwon-esque record company in original show. There's several other things like the mock album covers (
The Supreme's A' Go-Go
,
Cream of the Crop
,
Let the Sunshine In
), the
Mahogany
-esque sequence, the Detroit riots etc. They even included the MLK recording that Motown distributed. However, I do commend the film for covering issues of the time period.
Not to echo what b-touch has already said, but the musical is mostly sung. In the movie, they turn some of the sung parts in to dialogue. To me these scenes have a weaker effect.
Even the recent tour of show couldn't quite measure up. The costumes were nice, though.
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