Wannabe cabaret singer, Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) finds herself on trial for the murder of a man she was having an extra-marital affair with in order to further her career (Dominic West). Whilst in prison awaiting her trial, she finds herself sharing a block with her favourite singer, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta Jones) who is also on trial for murder. Through Velma, Roxie makes contact with superstar lawyer, Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) who is defending both murderesses. But a rivalry develops between them to ensure that they maintain Billy’s attention, and save their singing careers once they are free from jail…
Doug says...
Coming at the time it does, Chicago feels very much like an apology for Moulin Rouge not winning the year before. It’s telling too that Nicole Kidman nabbed her Oscar for The Hours this year, after missing out for her turn as Satine. Chicago isn’t as stunning and complete as Moulin Rouge, but it still plays an important part in the reinvention of movie musicals.
What director Rob Marshall does so brilliantly is he transposes a very theatrical musical to the cinema in such a way that it feels built for the silver screen. He reinvents and re-angles the entire thing so that the musical numbers play out on a Vaudeville stage obviously in Roxie’s head. And this then allows for very exciting choreography. His staging of The Cell Block Tango has become iconic (you can tell because it’s often heavily spoofed), while the opening All That Jazz is half the reason Catherine Zeta-Jones won the Supporting Actress Oscar.
I love Marshall’s bravery and imagination here (it would later lead him into failure with his godawful version of Nine) and the way he utilises the considerable talents of Renee Zellweger, Zeta Jones, and Queen Latifah (whose rip-roaring Matron Mama Morton is scene-stealing done to a tee) is fabulous. The comparison of a murderess being hanged to a circus performer doing a vanishing act is something that can only be done in cinema, and it’s sublime in its sudden darkness.
Where the film feels occasionally flat is in its quieter moments. Re-watching, I found the slower songs and dialogue-heavy scenes to be quite a drag. Zeta Jones lifts the tone every time she’s on it with some whip-sharp choreo, but there are moments (including the very drawn out ‘Roxie’) where I was itching for the fast-forward button. A great reimagining of a slightly dusty musical, but I still feel that it was partly an attempt to apologise for Moulin Rouge missing out the year before.
Highlight
Catherine Zeta Jones roars through All That Jazz in a way that sets the duo tone of glamour and darkness from the very beginning. A consummate, professional turn.
Lowlight
Numbers like Mr Cellophane and Roxie end up dragging quite a bit, and Richard Gere has a few stumbles as the slick lawyer Billy Flynn.
Mark
8/10
Paul says...
This is our first musical since 1968’s Oliver! over 30 years beforehand and, so far, this is the most recent musical to win Best Picture. The films of the noughties seem to be all about resurgences of old genres. We saw the swords-and-sandals epic reinvented through Gladiator, we’ll see the big-budget fantasy return to fashion in next week’s Lord of the Rings, and Chicago, along with the previous year’s Moulin Rouge, sits perfectly in the resurgence of the movie musical, with Phantom of the Opera, The Producers, Rent, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, Sweeney Todd, Mamma Mia, Les Mis and Into the Woods all following in quick succession.
However, I would never place Chicago amongst my favourite musicals. For starters, I just don’t like the songs. I would never re-listen to any of them, and generally they grind the plot to a halt. All of them take place within the heads of one of the characters, and are used to further accentuate a character’s motivations or traits. A couple work quite well plot-wise, such as the opening number, ‘All That Jazz’, in which Roxie watches Velma perform it then fantasises about herself taking Velma’s place. And ‘Cell Block Tango’ has a strong sense of fun. But many others are forgettable and by the final half an hour, it feels like the writers are just filling up time with even more vaguely jazz-inspired numbers involving excessive amounts of fishnet stockings and feathers.
The film looks great too, although it’s nowhere near on a par with the vivacity of Moulin Rouge, or the light and dark of Victorian London in Oliver! I think because it’s such a heavily idealised vision of the 20s. The whole thing is an extended version of the naff 20s-themed office parties, where queues for elaborate cocktails are made all the more excruciating by Brenda from HR trying to wrap her feather boa around you (I’m not speaking from personal experience, here). The sheer falseness of it means that it’s hard to see how the musical is based on real life events, and the biting satire of America’s corrupt judiciary system gets lost amidst the lights and glamour. The Great Gatsby, it ain’t.
A massive saving grace for me is the lead performance. Most viewers rave about Catherine Zeta-Jones and she is great, thoroughly deserving of her Best Supporting Actress Oscar because she plays against her “nice, virginal girl” type so well. She probably had an absolute ball throwing snarks left, right and centre. But it’s Zellweger that steals it for me. Her character is ridiculous. A bloke she is sleeping with turns out to be a liar so that first thing she does is reach for the gun. And she’s so fixated on a fame identical to Velma Kelly’s that the performance could have been a poor man’s Anne Baxter in All About Eve (indeed, the two films are very similar). But every facial expression, dance move, and exclamation felt spontaneous and real to me. It’s a shame she lost out on Best Actress, but at least she lost to the powerhouse that is Nicole Kidman.
So no, I’m not a Chicago fanatic. Like Doug, I think it only won because Moulin Rouge lost out the year before- a sort of Academy Awards-style compensation. I think there are stronger, more original, and more gripping musicals out there. For a show that requires a huge amount of energy to perform in it, it doesn’t half slog towards the end.
Highlight
The opening number establishes the two main characters and their situations through music, movement and camera work so creatively, it’s a real shame that the film doesn’t keep it up
Lowlight
John C. Reilly’s a great actor but his character gets nothing except pathetic buffoonery, occasional displays of misogyny and an incredibly boring solo number.
Mark
4/10
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