by Massie Twins

Created on: February 16, 2008

When music and visuals coalesce on a silver screen the results can quite simply be magic. When Bill Condon's Dreamgirls' hits the theatres this Christmas, audiences will experience moments when these cinematic elements come together in some of the most beautiful eye candy the silver screen has offered all year.

Now if visuals alone were enough to give a movie an Oscar, then according to legendary film critic Roger Ebert, the Joel Schumacher Batman movies should have been Academy Award winners. The simple fact is, while Condon delivers a solid musical adaptation of the stage production of Dreamgirls", and although it is the most stellar offering for the genre since best picture winner Chicago' serenaded audiences in 2002, Dreamgirls' is receiving far too much hype.

The reason is simple; it is easy to hype a film when it is kept under lock and key and promoted as a heavy duty Oscar contender. While Dreamgirls' is a flashy and sometimes fun musical, with some great music and soulful performances, the glamour is really all on the surface. It is a perfect case of too much razzle-dazzle and not enough substance. The story of the rise and fall to stardom of the Dreamettes, a fictional African American girl group who take the pop charts by storm, is ultimately quite shallow.

Closely replicating familiar stories of recent Oscar worthy films focused on other real life musicians who fought their way to fame during the sixties and seventies, Dreamgirls' doesn't exactly cover any new ground. Manipulative managers, adulterous affairs between musicians and their backup singers, drug abuse and of course jealous soul sisters are just some of the rehashed; been there, done that material that plagues Dreamgirls'.

Condon, whose last film Kinsey' was a solid piece of narrative storytelling with fantastic directorial flair, is able to bring out another solid piece of filmmaking in Dreamgirls'. The director continue his experimentations with solid editing and stylish transitions which made his last film so flashy, and with fantastic lighting, set design and slick period costumes Condon is able to create stunning, dream-like backdrops for which the film is set, which in turn evoke powerful performances from his leads.

Like any good musical, Dreamgirls' in comprised of two acts, each jam-packed with the fantastic rhythm and blues music of the Broadway play. The girls' careers gets jumpstarted under the watchful eye of their manager, Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx). Their initial touring

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