Starring: Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere
Director: Ron Marshall
Rated: PG
THOSE of us who liked the stage version of Chicago might tread warily to this film adaptation, but I suspect nearly everyone will have a spring in their step as they walk away from it.
As soon as she finishes her ‘All that Jazz’ number, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is arrested for the murders of her husband and sister. Before the show she caught them in bed together. Watching her dazzling performance that night is Roxanne ‘Roxie’ Hart (Renee Zellweger), a wannabe cabaret star. Soon enough, she guns down her lover, Fred Casely, who never delivers on his promise to make her a star. In jail, both women come under the care of Matron ‘Mamma’ Morton (Queen Latifah), who with a little financial encouragement, arranges for Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) to represent them.
Billy has never lost a case. As the two women vie for Billy’s affections and for the front pages of Chicago’s papers, Billy sets out to get Velma and Roxie off death row and out of jail.
I am fond of saying that it’s misguided to say that a film ‘was not as good as the book’. They are different genres offering different styles of engagement. Taking my own advice and applying it to this film, I can’t say that the stage show was better. They are vastly different genres. Chicago the film, however, is a big-budget, old-time Hollywood musical given a special effects makeover.
The music is shamelessly toe tapping, the dance routines are breathtaking, if at times risque. Bill Condon’s extra script material for the film appropriately fills in gaps in the stage story. Dion Beebe’s cinematography is outstanding, seamlessly moving between dark and moody jazz scenes to street scenes to courtrooms to jail houses.
Rob Marshall moves the drama along at a cracking pace and never takes his eye off the theatricality of the piece. In many respects this is a ‘fusion film’ between styles and genres. It works. My only complaints are the hyperactive editing, especially in the musical numbers, and the casting of Richard Gere as Billy Flynn. While Zeta-Jones is a knockout from the start, Zellweger enthrals by the end and John C. Reilly is endearing in the thankless role of Amos Hart, and even though Gere won a Golden Globe Award for his efforts I do not think he looks at home here at all.
Set against the backdrop of the roaring twenties, sexual freedom is, literally, in our faces, but the film version of Chicago has even more to say than the stage show did about spin doctoring, the cult of celebrity and trial by media.
I cannot remember a recent musical, not even Moulin Rogue, where after a short while the cinema audience started clapping the show-stopping numbers as they finished on the screen. Now that’s entertainment!
