Subtle is not a word that anyone will ever use to describe any music video Beyonce does. The "Single Ladies" singer is a one-woman show, bursting with breasts, hips, glitter and baby oil. Beyonce doesn't just dance in her music videos, her moves are accented with dramatic hair flips, exaggerated poses, furious crumping and stank faces. Sasha, I mean Beyonce, has wrapped all of these trademark tricks up in a bag, shaken it and dropped out the result in the form of her "Sweet Dreams" music video. If you liked "Single Ladies" you should love "Sweet Dreams." If you liked the "Halo" video, prepare for sensory overload, grandma. Watch.
The video starts out with Mrs. Jay-Z sleeping peacefully to the tune of a musicbox. But something is amiss; Beyonce appears to be levitating from her bed. As she rises, the camera zooms in on the singer's face and when she opens her eyes, we see that she has been transported to a wasteland of sorts. Is this wasteland a metaphor for the careers of all the female singers Beyonce has stamped out in the music industry? I think I saw a copy of Ciara's "Fantasy Ride" in the corner.
Before the solitude really starts to set in, Bey breaks into a dance routine with two dancers who appear out of thin air. Here, people will say she's rehashing "Single Ladies" but I disagree. The only similarities between the two are the fact that she has two female back-up dancers. Otherwise the energy and choreography are different.
In the next scene, Beyonce is wearing a cut-up mini-dress that looks like Freddy Kruger got his hands on. At first, I almost passed out cause she looked NAKED underneath that thang. But alas, she has on a nude-colored bodysuit. (Boo!) In this scene, Beyonce uses kaleidoscope-like cuts (Look, three Beyonces!) to make our brains turn to mush, all while the singer struts with pieces of fabric flowing behind her, and ever-present fan blowing her hurr. The crackling sensual energy Beyonce emits in this scene alone is enough to make you wish you could trade places with Jay-Z.
Beyonce moves on to a Supremes-like dance segment after this, and the most interesting thing about this scene is the camera angle. The bulk of the choreography from an aerial view, slightly from the left.
The coup d'grace however is easily the appearance of B-3P0. Beyonce slicks her hurr down into a Missy Elliott fingerwave, squeezes into a C-3P0-inspired gold suit and twitches back and forth. I need to say it again: Beyonce is hot! She's also really good at playing a robot, which is and isn't a compliment. Let's just say she has the vacant expression of a robot down pat.
The Good: The dancing, the outfits and the B-3P0 suit.
The Bad: It looks a little bit cheap in some scenes. I know it's a recession but there's a whole lotta green screen in this video and not all of it looks first-rate.
The Ugly: The crumping. Beyonce does this during the "My guilty pleasure, I ain't goin' nowhere" part, but crumping is too masculine for this song. The aggressive moves look primate-like and are off in a video that showcases an otherwise sexy, feminine Beyonce.
