***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly, Taye Diggs, Lucy Liu, Dominic West, Jon Polito, Christine Baranski, and Colm Feore
Directed by Rob Marshall & written for the screen by Bill Condon, from the musical by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Bob Fosse, and Fred Ebb
2002 PG13
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2002
Because it’s a big-budget musical, “Chicago” owes its very existence to the success of last’s year “Moulin Rouge.” That movie was partially wasted on me because it turned melodramatic and weepy in its last third, and expected me to get all wet-eyed about its witless love story. “Chicago” is more like “His Girl Friday,” in which shameless, hopelessly despicable characters do one shameless, hopelessly despicable thing after another. There’s never a moment’s apology from any of them, but we can sense their mixture of amusement and regret at their own capacity for wickedness. If “Chicago” wanted us to believe its leading lady was really innocent of murdering her boyfriend, then it would be unbearable. But this movie knows its characters are scum, and is hilarious. “Chicago” finds the right tone of playful cynicism and sticks with it.
That leading lady is Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger), an aspiring singer in the 1930s who is so obviously and unabashedly a gold-digging harlot that we can’t help but like her. When we first meet her she is staring lustily at a star nightclub singer (Catherine Zeta-Jones), then cheating on her husband by hopping into bed with a sleazebag who talks vaguely about “knowing the guy who owns the club.” The sleazebag (Dominic West) is, of course, a big fat liar. When he confesses he doesn’t know anyone in show business and that he thinks she’s a no-talent hack, she puts three bullets in him.
Soon Zellweger is defending her life with the help of an amoral lawyer (Richard Gere). Her case, thanks to Gere’s willingness to be interpretive when it comes to facts, captures the attention of radio and the newspapers. He begins a campaign of selling her as a good girl corrupted by jazz, liquor, and the big city. “Chicago” has more than a few things to say about how fame chews people up and spits them out, and while it may be easy to play on the sentiments and heartstrings of a media-soaked public, it’s just as easy for it to forget all about you.
As Roxie, Zellweger is a vicious, selfish fame-junkie, masked by a pout, a squeaky voice, and the aura of an innocent little girl. She is constantly, almost desperately reassuring others—which really means reassuring herself—of how talented she is. “Chicago’s” supporting cast is just fantastic, with Zeta-Jones as another fame-hungry singer who murdered her husband. She doesn’t like that Zellweger is about to steal the public eye away from her. They share the same lawyer in Gere, who is a reprehensible sweet-talker when the women are famous, but can’t even remember their names when they’re not. As the warden of the women’s prison, Queen Latifah is completely nonchalant, even amused about living in a world rampant with corruption. She gives both women advice, and they know she’s lying, and she knows they know she’s lying, but this only brings a smile to her face.
About the only decent person in the movie is Zellweger’s long-suffering lug of a husband, played by John C. Reilly. He stands by her, even after he learns of her affair, and is used, abused, and walked over by Zellweger and Gere. It’s appropriate that Reilly’s only song is “Mr. Cellophane,” about being a man no one notices. Reilly is in three of this year’s five Oscar nominees for Best Picture (this one, “The Hours,” and “Gangs of New York”), has worked with directors like Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” and “Hard Eight”) and Terrence Malick (past Best Picture-nominee “The Thin Red Line”), and is himself up for Best Supporting Actor. But he’s not exactly a familiar name, even if he is one of those “I’ve seen him somewhere before…” kind of guys.
Director Rob Marshall uses some of the same quick-cutting and fast camera motions Baz Luhrman used in “Moulin Rouge,” but he is more focused, without the camera-shaking that made some of “Rouge’s” viewers nauseous. He has also included a clever little trick in which all the singing and dancing in “Chicago” takes place in a kind of alternate reality. Reilly doesn’t sing a word of “Mr. Cellophane” in Gere’s office, but Marshall cuts between that conversation and Reilly’s imaginary performance of the song on an empty stage. The same goes for Queen Latifah’s number about graft and Gere’s explanation of how to sweet-talk a jury. Every song is prefaced by a piano-playing master-of-ceremonies portrayed by Taye Diggs, who must get regularly into fights with Jude Law about who’s more chiseled.
“Chicago” is a spotless technical production, with enormous, elaborate sets, both indoor and outdoor, rich costumes and makeup, and some pretty substantial choreography. Part of the movie’s tone is to be hyperbolic, and all the femme fatales in the women’s prison are at once dressed in tatters, perfectly made-up, and displaying powerful dancers’ thighs in stockings and garters. This movie has a lot of women’s underwear; in the same way that every major event in Renaissance painting seems to take place while people are naked, “Chicago’s” women are in a nightie, at best, during their life-changing moments. The movie’s music—from the Broadway musical of the same name, penned by Bob Fosse, Maurine Dallas Watkins, and Fred Ebb—is ragtime, swing, big band, and jazz. Unlike “Moulin Rouge,” there are no reprises, in which we have to sit through the same song half-a-dozen times. True, while I wasn’t humming any of “Chicago’s” songs on my way out of the movie theater, the only time I’ve ever had show tunes stuck in my head was after playing in a pit orchestra. “Happy Talk” my ass.
The average Disney animated movie will contain tons of singing and dancing, but the live-action movie musical seems to have been in a lull for the past couple decades. Occasionally a big-name director will toss out a novelty musical, like Ken Branagh’s Shakespeare-Gershwin “Love’s Labour Lost,” Woody Allen’s “Everybody Says I Love You,” or Martin Scorsese’s “New York, New York.” (I can see it now, “Gangs of New York, New York,” in which Bill the Butcher gets to find rhymes for ethnic slurs.) “Chicago” and “Moulin Rouge” are the genre’s revival, and this new generation seems to have the sensual and the vulgar a lot more on its mind than “An American in Paris” or “Singin’ in the Rain.” The running gag in “Chicago” is to juxtapose the macabre, bawdy, or despicable with a song that’s cute or silly. It made me laugh.
Finished February 16, 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Friday & Saturday Night