Just supreme: Murphy, Hudson and 'Dreamgirls'

Bill Condon's screen adaptation of the 1981 Broadway sensation is, if possible, as dazzling and energizing as its source. Because the movie foregrounds the story of showbiz glory and shame against the triumphs and failures of the civil-rights movement, this razzle-dazzle has teeth. It's social history in song, with great dresses.

In an era when hip-hop so completely dominates popular music, it may be ancient history that rhythm-and-blues artists of the 1950s and '60s were deemed too black for white America. This thinly veiled account of how Berry Gordy Jr. engineered the rise of the Supremes from Motown backup singers to Las Vegas headliners asks why, in seeking mainstream acceptance, soul artists sold their souls along with their artistic integrity. Is it just the price of fame?

A backstage musical in which the drama comes in lyrics bursting with helplessness and high hopes, Dreamgirls opens in a flurry of movement and a blaze of light - suggestive of the mother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It's a close encounter of the trio kind: three identically dressed Detroit homegirls, poufs of bouffant hair and skirts, at a talent show. The brassy one with the pipes is Effie (Jennifer Hudson). The one who sounds like a giggling flute is Lorrell (Anika Noni Rose). And then there's the clarinet-voiced Deena (Beyoncé Knowles), poised and pretty, accustomed to standing in Effie's shadow.

No sooner are they discovered than the "Dreamettes" are singing backup to soul legend James "Thunder" Early (Murphy, pugnacious and poignant). Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx), a used-Cadillac dealer, regards the beauties as the vehicle that will drive him out of the ghetto and into Hollywood.

The soul Svengali takes up with Effie, redesigning the Dreamettes as the Dreams, confecting for them vanilla satin gowns and matching music. But when Curtis decides that Deena, lighter, thinner and more conventionally pretty than Effie, should front the group and share his bed, the dream curdles. And provides Hudson's Effie with the pyrotechnic "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," anthem of a love back-burnered. (Except for this and "Listen," written and performed by Beyoncé, it's not the songs you remember about Dreamgirls, but what the songs reveal about the character singing.)

Condon's lightning pace makes the movie sparkle - and snap. He orchestrates it as a visual and musical medley, one number segueing into the next - occasionally the same number - as it bridges a rehearsal of the song and its performance. His screenplay for the movie version of Chicago likewise employed this device, making the movie rush by. John Myhre's evocative sets and Sharen Davis' exquisitely slinky costumes advance the story as effectively as the music.

The movie is asymmetrical in that the supporting players, Murphy and Hudson, eclipse the nominal leads, Foxx and Knowles.

I waited for Foxx's Curtis to emerge as a three-dimensional character in the manner of his Bundini Brown in Ali and Ray Charles in Ray, but it just didn't happen. Watching the strangely subdued Foxx hand over scene after scene to Murphy, it seemed as though the younger actor had made the calculation "I've got my Oscar; I'm going to help Eddie get his."

And is Murphy ever deserving. It would have been enough if his James Early had just channeled soul whirlwind James Brown. But he also pierces your heart with the shards of Early's shattered confidence and the quills of his prickly pride.

Making her movie debut, Hudson is a knockout. Her Effie (based on Florence Ballard, whose battle with the bottle contributed to her premature death at 32) is vibrant, vital and uncompromising. She is the sympathetic figure of the story in which Deena is like an inflatable doll for the first four-fifths and becomes recognizably flesh-and-blood only at the end.

Knowles is surely the loveliest creature in the movies, Jessica Rabbit come to life. And while she mesmerizes while singing "Listen," her declaration of independence from Curtis ("I followed the voice you gave me, but now I gotta find my own"), only in this sequence is she anything more than decorative. Someone, please sit her down with a stack of Judy Garland DVDs and show her that acting is just like singing, you have to feel the words.

Happily, the disappointments of Foxx and Knowles do not diminish Condon's stunning achievement. The writer/director of Gods and Monsters and Kinsey (he bagged a screenwriting Oscar for Gods and a nomination for Chicago), Condon is drawn to characters who confuse professional with sexual desire. With Dreamgirls, he plays these themes, and what results is a pop opera that even musical-haters can love.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.

Dreamgirls *** 1/2

Produced by Laurence Mark, written and directed by Bill Condon, based on the Broadway musical by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen, photography by Tobias Schliessler, music by Henry Krieger, lyrics by Tom Eyen, distributed by DreamWorks SKG.

Running time: 2 hours, 11 mins.

Deena. . . Beyoncé Knowles

Effie. . . Jennifer Hudson

Lorell. . . Anika Noni Rose

Curtis Taylor Jr.. . . Jamie Foxx

James "Thunder" Early. . . Eddie Murphy

Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual candor, drug content, profanity)

Showing at: area theaters