A review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Directed and choregraphed by Rob Marshall; written by Bill Condon, based on the musical play (book by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb) and the play by Maurine Dallas Watkins; director of photography, Dion Beebe; edited by Martin Walsh; music by John Kander, lyrics by Mr. Ebb, original score music by Danny Elfman; production designer, John Myhre; produced by Martin Richards; released by Miramax Films. At the Ziegfeld Theater, 141 West 54th Street, Manhattan. Running time: 108 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
STARRING: Renée Zellweger (Roxie Hart), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Velma Kelley), Richard Gere (Billy Flynn), Queen Latifah (Matron Mama Morton), John C. Reilly (Amos Hart), Lucy Liu (Kitty Baxter), Taye Diggs (Bandleader), Colm Feore (Harrison), Christine Baranski (Mary Sunshine), Dominic West (Fred Casely) and Chita Rivera (Nickie).
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Chicago is based on a play from the 1920s penned by Maurine Watkins, a writer for the Chicago Tribune. It’s about a semi-talented singer and dancer named Roxie Hart who wants to be a star and is willing to do anything to get the public’s attention. Once she has their attention, she’ll behave even more desperately to keep it.
Played with plenty of razzle and a good deal of dazzle by Renee Zellweger, Roxie is a grand character. She’s snotty. Greedy. Self-absorbed. She’s unfaithful to her adoring but simple-minded husband (played by John C. Reilly), because he’s just a paycheck to her, just a step on the ladder. As for her lover, when he refuses to connect her with show-biz bigwigs, she doesn’t just leave him behind… she murders him.
That’s just the beginning of Roxie’s sensational show. She goes on to capture the attention of the general public through the news, learning from a greasy lawyer named Billy (Richard Gere) how to manipulate the media until she’s so famous that she can do no wrong.
Turning all of her talents toward serving her base appetites, Roxie does not have a single redeeming quality in her character.
Neither does Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the sexy and sophisticated showgirl who is jailed alongside Roxie for a murder of her own.
And Billy the Lawyer? He’s the devil incarnate, exploiting his clients to stuff his own wallet, inventing scandal and spectacle wherever he goes. The movie gets most of its fun out of letting these villains flaunt their devilry in song and dance. And in the end, Roxie, her lawyer, and her idol find ways to use each other in power plays that will not only help them escape capital punishment… it will make them successful stars.
With all of this extravagant and sordid drama, Chicago, as directed by Rob Marshall, certainly engages the eyes and the ears. But does it have anything to offer the mind and the heart?
Perhaps the original stage show explores some questions about right and wrong. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t seen it. Perhaps it leaves us with a sense of tragedy for the poor abused husband.
Marshall’s Chicago makes Roxie’s husband too much of a sap for us to care that he is being mistreated. It sets us up to excuse Roxie’s wrongdoing. We don’t see what he sees in Roxie, whereas in Moulin Rouge we could see the sadness in Nicole Kidman’s showgirl, a regret that exposed a redeemable soul. Roxie has sold her soul to the devil before Chicago even begins, so we must sit and endure her misbehavior, one dirty deed after the next, without ever seeing even a flinch of conscience behind those ravenous eyes.
Whatever the nature of the source material, this movie never even attempts to invite us into a story of conscience. If anything, it invites us to enjoy and celebrate its characters’ self-indulgent rebellion.
To be fair… the news isn’t all bad. Chicago does has some impressive singing and some impressive dancing, and that is rewarding in itself. Zellweger, one of my favorite actresses, struts more stuff than we ever knew she had. Zeta-Jones reaches back to her days as a dancer to turn in some showstopping numbers. She prowls and possesses the stage with such vigor that it feels like she’ll jump off the screen. And Richard Gere gives the most playful and amusing performance he’s given in many a year … I’ve never been a Gere fan, but I enjoyed his enthusiasm here.
Best of all, though, is Queen Latifah, whose big number happens early and remains the most memorable sequence of the film.
Unfortunately, for all its “razzle-dazzle” and jazz, Chicago has only one point to make, and it’s a safe one, one that everybody knows and agrees with. It tells us that the media and the scandal-hungry public perpetuate ongoing orgies of celebrity worship, making cultural heroes out of egomaniacs and criminals. Big news, huh?
A good satirist exposes and exaggerates a problem to make a point. He explores the subject, so we come away wiser, stinging from the sharpness of his observations. The Player is great satire — you can tell director Robert Altman and writer Michael Tolkin care about the conflict between commercial entertainment and art. The Player clearly intends for us to be horrified by the central character’s amorality, and the way he uses and abuses others to his own advantage. In Bob Roberts, Tim Robbins is clearly trying to show us how politicians steal our hearts with sleight of hand. Both of these movies show exaggerated, wicked behavior in order to highlight the evils that men do, and engage our sense of right and wrong. Chicago isn’t so smart, nor does it have the heart to take on questions of right and wrong.
Chicago seems like the year’s most likely candidate for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. That is not a compliment.
Many Oscar voters are about to pass over rich, masterfully crafted, meaningful motion pictures in favor of one that’s a big, flashy, cynical spectacle.
Sure, The Pianist is Roman Polanski’s best film in decades, perhaps his greatest masterpiece. Yeah, that Peter Jackson did an extraordinary job in bringing The Fellowship of the Ring to the screen, one of the most challenging sagas ever written. Hey, we can all see there are more great performances in The Hours than in any one film of the past several years.
But Chicago? It celebrates bad behavior more spectacularly than anything we’ve seen all year.
Mark my words, it’s Chicago that we’ll be seeing in the winner’s circle. And the Academy will make yet another choice that will be an embarrassment even just a few years down the road, when these other films have taken up residence not only in viewers’ senses, but in their hearts as well.
Without a shred of satire, Robert Redford’s film Quiz Show treated the subject of media madness better than any film I’ve seen. At its heart were characters with confused moral compasses, but at least they had moral compasses. We could feel their consciences pricking at them. It was a sobering spectacle.
It shoud be a sobering spectacle. After all, it is a very real problem. The O.J. trial. The Robert Blake trial. The Winona Ryder trial. It pains me to see these over-hyped scandals on the news, generating hype and more glory for the crooks. A good movie about these lurid circus shows, satirical or otherwise, should leave us wiser and more alert to such exploitation. Chicago makes such wickedness look like a fact of life, and coaxes us toward surrendering to its spectacle… something we can’t do anything about.
Chicago is not sobering. It does not explore an issue, stinging us with poignant jabs. It just shows us the problem. It’s a pretty song about dry rot. It’s a can-can about cancer. And having shown us the disease, it then sends us off with all the hoopla of a ticker-tape parade. Showbiz is saying, “Yes, aren’t we just awful? Aren’t we so naughty? Eight dollars, please.”
This movie’s popularity proves its own point: Give them a heaping plate of empty, wicked, self-congratulatory revelry, and everybody – especially Oscar – will cheer and beg for more.