For a movie about singing, Dreamgirls is surprisingly shy about also being a musical. Following the highs and lows of a fictional singing trio modeled on The Supremes, the movie spends almost an hour building up steam with musical numbers that are justified by audiences and nearby pianos before the training wheels finally come off. Newcomer Jennifer Hudson does the honors, belting out the first a cappella notes -- "What about me?" -- intended as communication, not entertainment. Hudson plays Effie White, instantly recognizable to us as the singing engine behind her group, The Dreams, even before she sings those notes. Her moderately plus-sized figure would likely preclude her from being part of the group otherwise. The story of Effie and The Dreams will be set in motion when a used-car salesman of a manager, in the form of Jamie Foxx, intrudes on the unsuccessful threesome and begins pouring honey into the ear of the group's honey, Deena, played by Beyonce Knowles. He wants to make Deena a star. If the other Dreams come along for the ride, great.

Dreamgirls is a 'rise and fall' story almost as old as music itself, but it gets a pass for dusting off the musical genre with some inspired performances, including the centerpiece, in which poor Effie is rounded on and attacked for not bowing down and stepping aside in favor of the prettier Deena. She fights back with "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" a wail in the key of pissed-off, as raw and throaty as its title demands. It's so emotional that it eventually descends into some unfortunate American Idol-style theatrics, but since the house is already flattened by that point, it hardly matters. If Hudson has the ability to funnel the closed-fist passion she brings to this role into serious dramatic fare, then we have a new star. Dreamgirls is not the role that will test her, though. It's too much of a comfort zone, and the film itself is not brave. If it really wanted to stun us into silence with its originality, it would have Danny Glover bust out a tune or two.

Much ink has been spilled about Eddie Murphy's role, which is at best unclear. He plays a singer called Jimmy Early who spends half his time making aggressive come-ons to the girls, who begin as his backup singers, and the other half complaining about not being taken seriously. Director Bill Condon does everything he can to add juice to the character and even includes a scene that hinges on the famous Eddie stare -- nobody can stare like Eddie -- but it's not enough to create multiple dimensions for a character that's essentially a James Brown impersonator. No doubt Condon felt pressure to bow to the play the film is based on, but more thought could have been put into tailoring the dramatic beats for movie audiences. This applies to all the characters, not just Murphy's. The film gets ahead of us, taking its characters and their problems more seriously than we do, until we find ourselves at a snow-swept funeral and we realize that if this were real life, we wouldn't even send flowers.

After Deena is eventually chiseled away from The Dreams, she's off on a rocket, to have one of those careers where people dream up entire projects for her and then wait for her to sign off on them. The film spends much time referencing a long-gestating screen version of Cleopatra that will star her. It mentions it so much, in fact, that I started secretly hoping that the latter portion of the pic would be some kind of movie-within-a-movie extravaganza with a baritone Mark Antony belting out a number or two. Instead, Deena ends up squashing the project in favor of looking for work on her own. This is the gritty portion of the film, after the candy-coated 60s are finished. For Dreamgirls, the '70s represents the same kind of 'party's over' era that the '80s were to Boogie Nights. There's a quick scene in which Deena meets with two shady movie producers, one of which is played by a shaggy-haired John Lithgow, and they do everything but ask her to audition topless.

Despite its thinly-drawn characters and unearned dramatic highs and lows -- at one point, a city is shown aflame from rioting just to amp up a brief moment, then it's forgotten -- Dreamgirls does not slouch on the music. The compositions are good enough to be believable as R&B classics and the performances are practically electric with energy. The Dreams, led by Jennifer Hudson, could probably go on tour right now and rake in millions -- they're that good. If only the film could have found a way to swallow more of its laborious plot points, which run the gamut from a payola scandal to cocaine abuse to plagiarism, and spit them back out in the form of music. Many of the key sequences, including a closing, climactic argument between two characters, unwisely lean on a spoken-word format to get across some feelings that cry out to be sung. As some musical classics like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg have proven, there's nothing that can't be sung. Dreamgirls deserves applause, but it's not good enough for an encore.