Jennifer Hudson gave me goose bumps. The "American Idol" finalist had no choice but to bring her A-game to "Dreamgirls," stepping into the shoes of Effie White. If she didn't do right by the role Jennifer Holliday immortalized on Broadway in the early '80s, a bunch of people would've wanted her head on a stick.

But what Hudson delivers in her debut performance is so spine-tingling, so powerful, so awesome, that it's hard to talk about anything but Effie.

Effie is the major talent in the Dreamettes, the amateur '60s girl trio she fronts with best girlfriends Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) and Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose). After losing out at a Detroit talent show, they meet car salesman/wannabe music mogul Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx), who gets them singing backup for the flamboyant soul singer James "Thunder" Early (Eddie Murphy -- we'll get to him in a minute) as they hit the road and drop hit records as Jimmy and the Dreams.

Curtis soon launches the girls as a solo act, and that's when all the backstage drama unfolds.

If you haven't figured it out by now, "Dreamgirls" is really just the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes played out in thinly veiled musical form. When Taylor moves the more photogenic Deena to lead-singer status, and later replaces Effie permanently with another singer (Sharon Leal), it's a nod to what Motown head Berry Gordy did when he replaced former lead Supreme Florence Ballard with Ross and, later, with Cindy Birdsong.

Originally dramatized on the Broadway stage, "Dreamgirls" the movie is just as much of a pop confection as the play, the Motown era compacted and repackaged for theater geeks. But the movie has a jazzy, spirited energy. You sense that director Bill Condon ("Gods and Monsters," "Kinsey") helmed "Dreamgirls" not only to appease those who have been craving a big-screen version for years but to show he could've done a good job directing the Oscar-winning movie version of "Chicago," which he wrote.

Some of the performances grab you more than others. Knowles gets the "Bless Her Heart" award (or as I like to call it, the Scarlett) for keeping her Colgate smile intact during her routine line readings and getting through her songs earnestly and efficiently. Foxx just maintains the oiliness -- and not much else -- of his one-note snake-of-a-character. You may be more impressed with Rose's turn as Lorrell, the middle-child Dream, as she tries to find a silver lining to being Early's mistress. Which reminds me ...

Eddie Murphy. First off, I'm glad to see him turn in a bravura performance that has nothing to do with wearing a fat suit. Secondly, I haven't seen him this spry and ready in ages. Throwing in obvious tips of the hat to Little Richard and James Brown, he plays Early as a slicked-out live-wire who hits the road to drug addiction hard when his glory days are behind him. Murphy gets to the fear and disappointment that all past-their-prime performers have. I always knew he had it in him.

But if there's one reason to see "Dreamgirls," it's Hudson. The character of Effie is what makes "Dreamgirls" such a dramatic ride, and Hudson takes to the role as if she has been ready to play the singer her entire life. Of course, when it comes time for her to perform the show-stopping "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going," she gives it such a heart-wrenching spin, it rattles the theater walls.

"Dreamgirls" will always be a story about soul, but Hudson provides something exciting, something unique, something real that pushes it into another dimension: She gives it the power of soul.