December
27, 2002 | It's sassy, jazzy and razzmatazzy. And, mind you, I'm
referring only to the opening production number. Just about everything
that follows in Chicago is every bit as sensationally entertaining.
To put it simply and gratefully, this is the sleekest and sexiest movie
musical to slither, shake and scintillate on screen since Cabaret.
Granted,
I can't compare this Chicago to the original 1975 Broadway production,
directed and co-written by the late, great Bob Fosse, or even to the
show's more successful, still-running 1996 revival. (I did catch a performance
by a third-rate touring company during the late 1970s, but fled the
scene of the crime at intermission.) Even so, I strongly suspect that
any comparisons would be largely irrelevant, given how director Rob
Marshall (a first-time feature filmmaker with ample stage experience)
and scriptwriter Bill Condon have more or less reconstituted the stage
production's basic elements.
On
stage, Marshall explains in the movie's production notes, Chicago
was a traditional Broadway musical in which characters suddenly burst
into song during plot-advancing activity. (In this case, a plot cribbed
from a 1926 play previously filmed in 1947 as Roxie Hart with
Ginger Rogers.) For the movie version, however, he and Condon have transformed
the production numbers into fantasies of would-be singer-dancer Roxie
Hart, the central character who "sees her life in these musical
sequences," Marshall says. This way, the movie exists simultaneously
on two planes: The harsh reality of Depression-era Chicago, and the
"surreality" of Roxie's imagination.
The
result is in many ways as deft and dazzling as Bob Fosse's similarly
stylized film of Cabaret. Better still, Marshall - who also co-directed
(with Sam Mendes) the recent, Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of
Cabaret - manages to infuse his own film with the same sort of
darkly and sharply cynical humor. Chicago is a movie about nasty
people doing nasty things - to themselves, each other, and various not-so-innocent
bystanders -- and they're all the more engaging and exciting for their
utterly amoral approach to igniting and sustaining their superstardom.
Roxie,
played with equal measures of naïve aspiration and ruthless cunning
by Renee Zellweger, fatally shoots her oily lover when he proves unwilling
(and, worse, unable) to help her fulfill her showbiz ambitions. Despite
her best efforts to pin the rap on her dumb but loving lug of a husband
(John C. Reilly) - with, it should be noted, the poor schnook's initial
acquiescence - Roxie winds up in prison, just a few cells down from
the lovely and talented Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who's facing
a murder conviction for her own crime of passion.
Both
women are represented by Billy Flynn (a twinkly eyed Richard Gere),
a smooth-talking, sharp-dressing and fact-twisting attorney who knows
that the best defense is a media blitz. When he isn't literally tap-dancing
around the truth in a Chicago courtroom - this is a musical, remember?
-- Flynn is busily image-spinning, transforming cold-blooded murderesses
into heart-tugging victims, and heart-tugging victims into headline-grabbing
heroines.
In
one of the movie's many inspired musical fantasies, Flynn is at once
a savvy ventriloquist, speaking for Roxie, and a master puppeteer, manipulating
reporters like sob-sister Mary Sunshine (Christine Baranski), while
turning the tide of public opinion against those who would prosecute
his poor, put-upon client.
"It's
all a circus, kid," Flynn tells Roxie. "A three-ring circus.
These trials - the whole world - all show business." The attorneys
for O.J. Simpson, Winona Ryder and assorted other celebrity defendants
would doubtless agree. Which, of course, is yet another reason why Chicago
is so much spiky fun.
Ultimately,
Flynn is so successful at transforming notoriety into celebrity, guilt
into innocence, that his two clients inevitably gravitate toward their
natural habitat - i.e., a spotlighted stage. Unfortunately, Chicago
lacks a sufficiently show-stopping number to celebrate this climactic
metamorphosis. But don't worry: Even though the finale leaves you vaguely
unsatisfied, just about every other knockout number in the John Kander-Fred
Ebb score offers abundant sizzle and spark.
Indeed,
it's difficult to single out one sequence as best of show, or first
among equals. There's the saucy tango number in a stylized cellblock,
performed by a dozen or so accused murderesses (all of whom insist that
their victims "had it coming"). There's the curtain-raising
and temperature-rising "All That Jazz," Zeta-Jones' first
opportunity to demonstrate her heretofore untapped talents for sultry
song and dance. There's Queen Latifah's serenely self-confident naughtiness
as the sashaying prison matron who promises, "When you're good
to Mama, Mama's good to you."
And
then there's Reilly, poignantly expressing his character's near-anonymity,
aptly describing himself as "Mr. Cellophane." And Zellweger,
all done up as a breathy Marilyn Monroe lookalike. And then…. And
then…. And so on.
Zellweger, Zeta-Jones and Gere may seem like odd choices for above-the-title
roles in a big, brassy movie musical. But trust me: They're so terrific,
they'll likely be offering repeat performances in other musicals. And,
yes, I do believe there will be other musicals - lots of them, actually
- because Chicago succeeds so brilliantly at blasting the cobwebs
off a dormant genre, and proving last year's wildly uneven but often
exhilarating Moulin Rouge wasn't a one-time-only fluke. The shows
must go on. And Chicago shows us why.