Dreamgirls

Broadway's Tony Award-winning Motown musical, about the rise of a "Supremes"-like supergroup and its Svengali-like promoter-turned-music-industry impresario, hits the big screen under the dynamic direction of "Chicago" scriptwriter Bill Condon. The dream cast includes Jamie Foxx as the ambitious car-salesman-turned-cunning entrepreneur, Beyoncé Knowles as the Diana Ross-like singing beauty molded into a pop music superstar by Foxx's Berry Gordy figure, Eddie Murphy as an R&B star who stands in for everyone from James Brown to Marvin Gaye, and "American Idol" casualty Jennifer Hudson (who won an Oscar for her film debut), who anchors the film with a hearty Cinderella-story performance. This bright, bold musical is, for all its moment-to-moment energy and excitement, ultimately curiously unmoving. Chalk it up to a plot that, for all the momentous melodrama, leaves little room for genuine characters to emerge, and a score that plays like a pale pastiche of the real Motown sound. Given that, Condon's vibrant direction pumps life into every scene, and the cast (which also features Anika Noni Rose, Keith Robinson, Sharon Leal and Danny Glover) fills in scant sketches of characters with passionate performances.

The collection of extended and alternate musical numbers on the single-disc edition will be supplement enough for most fans of the film. The 35 minutes of uncut numbers (including the talent-show groups and the mock-Jackson 5 band) play like a video album of musical highlights, complete with a bonus track: the cut number "Effie, Sing My Song," a duet with Jennifer Hudson and Keith Robinson (the scene was replaced with spoken dialogue in the finished film). The two-disc edition features the exhaustive two-hour documentary "Building the Dream" (which, at its most interesting, illustrates the care in recreating the era through sets, locations and costumes); brief but nicely focused featurettes on the editing, costume design and stage lighting; and "previsualization sequences" (a mix of storyboard sketches, video rehearsal footage, prerecorded music and temp dialogue) of seven key musical scenes. The supplemental highlights include the Beyoncé Knowles screen test (briefly seen in the documentary) and Anika Noni Rose audition. Also available on Blu-ray and HD DVD.