The 1920’s in Chicago. The city is rife with illegal booze, jazz clubs, and corruption. Roxie (Renee Zellweger) is a chorus girl who dreams of being a star. One day she shoots her lover in a rage at his betrayal. In prison she meets Velma (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who was Chicago’s most celebrated showgirl until she shot and killed two people. Velma has retained the city’s most successful defense lawyer, Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), who never fails to produce acquittals for women indicted for murder.
Roxy also seeks Flynn’s representation and quickly becomes his star client. The two women compete for headlines, trial dates, public sympathy, and all the stardom that their crimes can get them, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of each other and of the public’s taste for the latest spilt blood. Director Rob Marshall and screenwriter Bill Condon have successfully adapted Bob Fosse’s popular musical “Chicago” for the screen. The production is spectacular. The “stagey” musical numbers and more conventional dramatic scenes are well integrated. Dion Beebe’s cinematography is creative and impressive. My only criticism of the film is that some of the more circus-like musical numbers struck me as overproduced and over-stimulating.
Many modern stage musicals become ensnared in the trap of overproduction, which can do more to distance the viewers from the musical numbers than to draw the audience into them. Some of that seems to have carried over into “Chicago” movie version. But the performances are good. Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere cope admirably with the challenge of singing and dancing in a musical. Catherine Zeta-Jones gives a standout performance. She unabashedly plays her character over-the-top, belts out every song with great conviction, and really sells her performance.
The Essay on “Chicago”
... is due to the way she crafted the play, with musical numbers as the plot. Watkin’s set the foundation on the Kander ... Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts ... jazz song that introduces the cultural changes going on in Chicago. The music consists of mostly brass instruments, for impact. Velma ...
Another impressive performance comes from Queen Latifah, who plays the women’s prison warden, Mama. She also holds nothing back, and it doesn’t hurt that she is a singer by profession. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah both have considerable stage experience, as well as being blessed with screen presence, which might explain their ability to bring great energy and a larger-than-life quality to this film version of a Broadway musical. If you’re a fan of musicals, Chicago is a must-see. If you’re not…well, musicals aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But I think there is enough entertainment in “Chicago” to please most movie goers. Bob Fosse’s sexy cynicism still shines in Chicago, a faithful movie adaptation of the choreographer-director’s 1975 Broadway musical.
Of course the story, all about merry murderesses and tabloid fame, is set in the Roaring ’20s, but Chicago reeks of ’70s disenchantment–this isn’t just Fosse’s material, it’s his attitude, too. That’s probably why the movie’s breathless observations on fleeting fame and fickle public taste already seem dated. However, Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones are beautifully matched as Jazz Age vixens, and Richard Gere gleefully sheds his customary cool to belt out a showstopper. (Yes, they all do their own singing and dancing.) Whatever qualms musical purists may have about director Rob Marshall’s cut-cut-cut style, the film’s sheer exuberance is intoxicating. Given the scarcity of big-screen musicals in the last 25 years, that’s a cause for singing, dancing, cheering.
Bibliography:
1) Chicago (Widescreen Edition).
Miramax Home Entertainment.
2003.
