So Chicago waited and waited as Hollywood went through a variety of stars (Madonna, John Travolta and others) and directors (Herbert Ross, Baz Luhrmann and anyone with a musical to their credit) before coming up with a combination that would stick. The film that arrives this holiday season has Rob Marshall at the helm, and Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones as the leads.
Murder, sex, fame, and all that jazz-it's Chicago in 1929. Zellweger plays Roxie Hart, a cute blonde who escapes the tiny confines of her dumpy apartment by dreaming of stardom. When her lover dumps her and reveals that all his connections to show biz were a lie, Roxie turns around and plugs the bastard. Then she asks her inconsequential hubby (John C. Reilly) to take the fall. But the cops suspect the truth and put poor Roxie in jail. Once in the slammer, Roxie meets Velma (Catherine Zeta-Jones), one half of a sexy sister act who's now in jail for killing her sibling over a husband they were sharing. Through Velma and Mama Morton (Queen Latifah), the woman who runs the prison like a savvy Hollywood agent, Roxie discovers that being arrested can be the best thing that could ever happen to one's career. She hires slick lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), a womanizer with a reputation for getting women off on murder charges. Roxie hopes he will save her from hanging and more importantly he will keep her on the front pages. Then Velma and Roxie engage in a catty battle for Flynn's and the media's attention.
On stage and in Fosse's hands, one can imagine how wickedly entertaining-and even dark-- this show could be. But on film and in Rob Marshall's hands, all that's left is the play's glossy exterior. Marshall's proposed solution to translating the play to the screen was to transform the musical numbers into manifestations of Roxie's fantasies. The film would then exist on two planes: the reality of Prohibition-era Chicago, and what Marshall calls the "surreality" of Roxie's overactive imagination. The only problem is that Marshall makes both these worlds look the same. Marshall had the opportunity with the medium of film to make a stark contrast between the grit of the real world and the gloss of Roxie's fantasies. The various murders and the harsh realities of the working class could have given the film edge in much the same way that Dennis Potter had reality and fantasy collide in Pennies from Heaven. The play blurred the line between notoriety and celebrity as it skewers the legal system, the media and show biz. But Marshall is too glib to get the dark edge or the satire. He even fails to make the city come alive and be a character in the story-although we're constantly told that Chicago has a personality all its own.
Marshall's style is to make everything relentlessly brassy and fake, and his Chicago simply looks like a filmed stage play. The only cinematic device that Marshall takes advantage of is editing, and he uses that to cover the fact that his trio of stars (despite claims of singing and dancing experience) have no discernable talent for musical comedy. Gene Kelly knew that the best way to showcase a dancer and a choreographer was to let much of a dance play out in wide shots (and come to think of it, Jackie Chan understands this as well when it comes to filming action choreography). Fast cutting for style is one thing, but here it seems to exist just to make the performers look like they can move fast and hit their marks on the beat.
As for the choreography, which is credited solely to Marshall, it's imitative of Fosse's style but it's not Fosse. Fosse was unique, and while many try to copy him, none have succeeded. He had a humorous sexiness, a sly showmanship, and a sense of movement that went against convention. Marshall keeps his dancers scantily clad and slinking around in an overt show of sexiness but his dances lack Fosse's wit and sensuality.
The cast is fine when they're acting and not singing and dancing. Gere seems energized by Flynn's flash and superficiality; Zellweger is cute but with a steely determination to achieve fame; and Zeta-Jones has fun making Velma as a clich ed vamp. But none of these performers invest the roles with any innovation.
Ironically, Chicago arrives in San Diego just as a new print of Singin' in the Rain opens for a limited run at the Ken Cinema. That 1952 musical featuring Gene Kelly still holds up as a classic with "Make & 'Em Laugh" and "The Broadway Ballet" combining the best of stage musicals with the potential of film. Chicago , by contrast, is a pathetic attempt at a movie musical, and is shamed by the genuine innovation and energy of such prior works as Fosse's Cabaret , Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar and Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge . In Moulin Rouge , neither Nicole Kidman nor Ewan MacGregor was a stellar musical star but the film reveled in their earnest and eager experiment and the results were charming. Chicago pretends that its stars are slick professionals crams them down our throats till we choke.
Chicago (now playing throughout San Diego) is rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content and language. It is a poor excuse for a movie musical. It treats its material like a stage play and then plops the viewer out in the audience to observe.
