Chicago

CHICAGO

Rating: A

I'll state right off the bat that I'm not a big fan of musicals. I've nothing against them specifically, it's just that they tend not to capture my interest the way a good drama or action picture can. But I sure enjoyed Chicago, and I found the whole experience quite uplifting.

Renee Zellweger plays Roxie Hart, an aspiring chorus girl in 1920's Chicago who guns down her lover in a fit of rage when he announces the relationship is over. Her devoted but boring husband (John C. Reilly) initially tries to shoulder the blame, but has a major change of heart when he learns she was cheating on him. So off to prison Zellweger goes to await trial, where she meets matron Queen Latifah and fellow inmate Catherine Zeta-Jones. Zeta-Jones is already a successful Vaudeville singer, or at least she was until she caught her husband and sister in bed together and solved the problem with a revolver. (Do you detect a pattern forming here?) So in steps hotshot lawyer Richard Gere to defend these lovely lasses from their appointment with the gallows.

Director and choreographer Rob Marshall craftily intersperses the musical numbers among the dramatic scenes. Often, a character will express their thoughts in song as if they were performing on stage before an audience, then the camera will return us to the "live" scene. It's a technique which works extremely well and keeps the story flowing. Speaking of the choreography, the dancing is quite fun to watch, although I don't know how much is Marshall's original ideas and how much is patterned after Bob Fosse's choreography in the original stage show.

One thing this movie did was make me respect the talents of its actors a whole lot more. I never thought Zellweger was particularly attractive, and, okay, I still don't, but she's certainly a good singer and dancer. I always regarded Zeta-Jones as the Barbie doll of the week (a.k.a. the flavor of the month), but her singing and dancing earned her new respect in my book. Plus, her shorter hair and makeup in this film really make her look hot (maybe Michael Douglas knew what he was doing after all). And up until now, I always figured Queen Latifah as basically a talentless rapper, included in movies to attract a certain audience demographic based solely on her celebrity. Her "When You're Good to Mama" number sure proved that notion wrong. As for the guys, Gere isn't likely to be compared to Mario Lanza any time soon, but his dancing is respectable. Even John C. Reilly gives a credible rendition of "Mr. Cellophane"; who would've ever thought of Reilly as a song and dance man?

Pervading through the dance numbers is a constant undertone of sexual energy, as is common with much of Bob Fosse's work. (I'm not complaining - rather I was actually starting to get jealous of some of those male dancers in close contact with all those lithe female bodies. But then I realized half of those guys are probably gay anyway... ) Pervading through the story itself is a severe case of cynicism. At its worst, murder as a crime of passion is given a very lighthearted treatment, and Zellweger and Zeta-Jones are never punished for their crimes. At its best, the story plays a clever riff on the pliability of the media, and the manner in which the truth is allowed to be twisted and subverted. One musical number has Zellweger as a ventriloquist's dummy on Gere's lap, mouthing his carefully scripted words to a flock of reporters on marionette strings. I couldn't help noticing the similarities with the current situation in Iraq, and find it somewhat astonishing that movies such as Chicago (and the current The Quiet American), based on works written decades ago, so accurately forecast our present times. But then, maybe I'm just seeing what I want to be seeing.