Of late, I will confess I have been enjoying musicals more than I have in the past. True, they still aren’t my favorite genre, but at least when I see something involving characters singing on the big screen, I do tend to enjoy them more than I have. So, seeing 2002’s adaptation of Chicago was leaving HBO Max at the end of the month, I might as well see it while I could. At the least, it would be one more movie crossed off my giant poster.
If nothing else, I could hear some good songs.
Now, I wasn’t the slightest bit familiar with Chicago prior to seeing the movie, so I didn’t really know much about the plot. It turns out it’s about a murder. Housewife and wannabe vaudeville singer and dancer Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) finds out her no-good lover Fred Casely (Dominic West) isn’t going to help her get a stage job, so she shoots him. He dies. There’s no ambiguity. She killed the guy, and then she almost convinced her simple but devoted husband Amos (John C. Reilly) to take the fall for her. When that doesn’t work, Roxie goes to the local prison, run by the kindly and corrupt matron Mama Morton (Queen Latifah), and including a number of accused women murderers. Most notable among them is Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a well-known show girl who walks around like the big star she apparently is.
Now, despite the fact no woman in the history of the city has been executed for murder, Roxie wants more help, and that comes from high-powered (and expensive) lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere). And yes, Amos will somehow raise the money to pay the guy and go along with every demeaning thing Billy and Roxie come up with in her defense, part of which seems to involve making her superfamous on top of being up for murder. Apparently, being on trial for murder is great for a show business career, and Roxie’s sudden rise is robbing Velma of the attention she wants for killing her husband and sister when she found them in bed together. It’s a deeply cynical movie underneath the jazzy score (just as I am sure the stage show is), and every one of the women in the prison actually did kill someone, for offenses that range from adultery to refusing to stop popping gum.
I am actually fine with a story this dark. Considering the play this movie is based on came out in 1975, it does seem to remarkably predict the 24 hour news cycle media circus for a murder trial when at least one person involved seems to be an attractive woman. The songs are a lot of fun, and the actors are all well-cast. Zellweger and Zeta-Jones, as the supposed ingenue and the jaded star, both pull off their roles well, Gere oozes sleaze as he does what he does so well, and Reilly may be the only truly sympathetic figure in the entire film, particularly when he sings his solo about how everyone disregards him, a moment that shows Reilly dressed and made-up like a vaudeville clown.
But despite all that, I did have some issues with the movie. Director Rob Marshall cuts often between a more realistic-looking cinematic setting and having the various actors play out on a stage as if the movie is being performed in a theater. That in and of itself isn’t a dealbreaker for me, but Marshall cuts between the two settings so quickly and frequently that I found it a little disorienting. Marshall also prefers lots of close-ups, often to faces, but sometimes to feet or the occasional female ass. It does make it harder to, say, enjoy the dancing that seems to be going on in these musical sequences. The editing seems far more appropriate for a music video than anything else, and what interest I had for what was happening was largely killed in how Marshall chose to present it.
Grade: C+
0 Comments