I am the worst possible target market for this movie. I am indifferent to dance, not a fan of musicals, and I always hate movies that have no sympathetic characters. So if I was won over, and I was, how could anyone else resist it?
CHICAGO is about Roxie Hart, theoretically a real person, a would-be vaudeville starlet who murders her lover when he reneges on his promise to put her in the spotlight. A couple of shots from a snub-nosed revolver gain her the fame that she couldn't get with her voice or her dance moves, and she will stop at nothing to keep it.
I can't believe I just wrote that. It makes the movie sound awful, but please believe me when I say it's not. It is the funniest comedy I have seen in a long time, much funnier than the same year's MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, although certainly nowhere near as wholesome. I think the key to CHICAGO's comic success is that, unlike in inferior comedies about unsympathetic people, we are supposed to laugh at their foolishness instead of at their nastiness.
Over and above that, the music really is good and the dancing superb. Although Renee Zellweger gets top billing, I call this Catherine Zeta Jones' show. She sings and dances magnificently; the suggestiveness of her number `All That Jazz' is twenty times sexier than the interspersed shots of Zellweger and Dominic West actually doing the deed, and I think that was deliberate. Zeta Jones adopts a feline persona for this movie, with short hair and a pasty face that makes her look so different from the previous roles I saw her in (THE MASK OF ZORRO, ENTRAPMENT, THE HAUNTING and SPLITTING HEIRS, for the record) that I quite literally did not recognize her. Zellweger's performance as a puppet in `The Press Conference Rag' is also very impressive, and `The Cell Block Tango' is superb.
The movie's relentless cynicism sometimes leaves a sour aftertaste, but I think that is unavoidable. CHICAGO is a movie about women trying to get away with murder. If there had been a sincere attempt to defend their actions, it would have become offensive. Cynicism is the only alternative I can think of, and is much preferable.
The supporting cast comes through very well. Richard Gere has never been much good at anything besides projecting smugness, so he has been cast as lawyer Billy Flynn, a role that requires nothing else. Kevin Spacey, also considered for the part, would have blown Gere's doors off, but Gere was probably the better choice regardless, since it's easier to imagine an airhead like Roxie falling for Gere than for Spacey. Queen Latifah does an adequate prison warden and shines in her musical number, while John C. Reilly is excellent, as always, as Roxie's numbskull husband. And I love Lucy Liu in anything she does, although in this case she doesn't get nearly as much screen time as she deserves.
I can't guarantee you'll like this movie; a lot of people saw it and didn't like it. But if I liked it, there's got to be at least a chance that you will too.
Rating: *** out of ****.
Recommendation: I don't care who you are: hie thee to the theater and watch it.
CHICAGO is about Roxie Hart, theoretically a real person, a would-be vaudeville starlet who murders her lover when he reneges on his promise to put her in the spotlight. A couple of shots from a snub-nosed revolver gain her the fame that she couldn't get with her voice or her dance moves, and she will stop at nothing to keep it.
I can't believe I just wrote that. It makes the movie sound awful, but please believe me when I say it's not. It is the funniest comedy I have seen in a long time, much funnier than the same year's MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, although certainly nowhere near as wholesome. I think the key to CHICAGO's comic success is that, unlike in inferior comedies about unsympathetic people, we are supposed to laugh at their foolishness instead of at their nastiness.
Over and above that, the music really is good and the dancing superb. Although Renee Zellweger gets top billing, I call this Catherine Zeta Jones' show. She sings and dances magnificently; the suggestiveness of her number `All That Jazz' is twenty times sexier than the interspersed shots of Zellweger and Dominic West actually doing the deed, and I think that was deliberate. Zeta Jones adopts a feline persona for this movie, with short hair and a pasty face that makes her look so different from the previous roles I saw her in (THE MASK OF ZORRO, ENTRAPMENT, THE HAUNTING and SPLITTING HEIRS, for the record) that I quite literally did not recognize her. Zellweger's performance as a puppet in `The Press Conference Rag' is also very impressive, and `The Cell Block Tango' is superb.
The movie's relentless cynicism sometimes leaves a sour aftertaste, but I think that is unavoidable. CHICAGO is a movie about women trying to get away with murder. If there had been a sincere attempt to defend their actions, it would have become offensive. Cynicism is the only alternative I can think of, and is much preferable.
The supporting cast comes through very well. Richard Gere has never been much good at anything besides projecting smugness, so he has been cast as lawyer Billy Flynn, a role that requires nothing else. Kevin Spacey, also considered for the part, would have blown Gere's doors off, but Gere was probably the better choice regardless, since it's easier to imagine an airhead like Roxie falling for Gere than for Spacey. Queen Latifah does an adequate prison warden and shines in her musical number, while John C. Reilly is excellent, as always, as Roxie's numbskull husband. And I love Lucy Liu in anything she does, although in this case she doesn't get nearly as much screen time as she deserves.
I can't guarantee you'll like this movie; a lot of people saw it and didn't like it. But if I liked it, there's got to be at least a chance that you will too.
Rating: *** out of ****.
Recommendation: I don't care who you are: hie thee to the theater and watch it.