There's a lot right with this filmed musical, but the music itself lets it down horribly, and when you're telling a tale that's a lawyer's red pencil away from being the history of the Supremes and classic period Motown, that's a mighty disadvantage.

It's a shame because Dreamgirls has a dream cast: Jennifer Hudson earns her Oscar as the monumentally pissed-off group leader cast aside for the slimmer, more malleable Beyoncé. Ms Knowles does a decent job in her first proper acting part, despite having to keep her own considerable pipes under wraps until a late, breakout song reveals some hidden personality.

The men are just as good: Danny Glover laps up a smallish role as a manager; Jamie Foxx never gives you a hint that this is the actor who metamorphosed into Ray Charles so totally as the smooth Berry Gordy figure pulling the strings; and Eddie Murphy is a revelation as a kind of James Brown/Marvin Gaye hybrid.

Directed by Bill Condon, who wrote the best recent theatre-to-film musical, Chicago, and directed exemplary biopics Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, the film comes to DVD a scarcely credible 26 years after its Broadway debut - surprisingly, it never made it to the West End - equalling Chicago in stage-to-screen gestation. It was a project around so long that both Whitney Houston and Lauryn Hill were potential neoRosses down the years. Despite the choreography and energy on display, without the music to lift it, it just seems like so much razzle-dazzle apart from the moments when Hudson puts her heart and soul into her revenge - imagine Aretha or Tina forced to "ooh" and "aah" breathily behind Diana Ross. I like to think she's inspired by her dissing, as an American Idol contestant, by Simon Cowell.