No one has been a more passionate Dreamgirls supporter than The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil, so his having written a 12.27 piece questioning whether it has the support to win the Best Picture Oscar is, I think, fairly significant. I don’t think there’s any question Dreamgirls will be nominated, but there’s a real sense of uncertainty out there about its final-heat chances. Read O’Neil’s piece and you’ll see what I mean. The winning of an Oscar never has anything to do with quality — it’s always about negative, anything-but votes (i.e., last year’s homophobic vote against Brokeback Mountain) will all hinge, I suspect, on how well it does with the mainstream rural types in theatres. I know that people are loving the musical vigor and splash (as I did, in spurts) but the key factor, as I speculated last week, is that lacks a strong and accessible common-to-all-cultures theme.
![](https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/themes/amory/patreon-banner.jpg)