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Chicago (Full Screen Edition) Customer Reviews (109 - 111 of 120 Reviews)

Please don't make me watch this again.
Chicago, winner of the academy award for best picture last year, (what a joke!!) is a poorly done, overblow attempt at a musical. Now I've seen Moulin Rouge a bunch of times, and that is a great movie. I've also got a good collection of musicals on DVD from Hollywood's golden era. This movie lacks an important ingredient, hmm, what's it called again, that's right - TALENT.

They used to make musicals where the people in them actually could sing and dance really well, they were not just overblown actors doing the best they can with the lack of talent they have been giving and having the songs mixed till they no longer resemble the original performance. Richard Gere is hopeless in this, his song is painful to listen to. Renee Zelwigger is an awful actress with these squinty eyes. Mr Cellophane goes down as the most irritating song put on celluloid (in my opinion only of course).

Now, lets get down to content. This movie is about adultery and murder, and that's it. And it's oh so trite and oh so unentertaining. At the end, squinty get's away with murder, there I've saved you some money.

Do yourself a favour, watch "singin' in the rain", or "Wizard of Oz", or even Moulin Rougue but don't waste time or money on this garbage.

It razzle-dazzled me!
"Chicago" is spectacular. What impressed me the most was how theatrical the film really was. It stuck exactly to the script of the original Broadway show and captured the essence of Fosse's original choreography. I was blown away. I already knew that Catherine Zeta-Jones could sing, and of course she impressed me (as always), but I was stunned by Renee Zellweger's outstanding performance, as well as Richard Gere's. They were all fabulous: even Queen Latifah was good (now there's something I thought I'd never say!).

It was an amazing film that really captured the "razzle dazzle" of the stage show, very brassy and daring and energetic. I loved it. Everyone needs to see it. I'm glad that "Moulin Rouge" started a trend and that the movie musical is making a major comeback.

Raw energy enough to blow open the cinema's doors
Not since ALL THAT JAZZ (1979) have I seen a film musical with as much raw energy as CHICAGO. This is fitting since the former is about the life of the brilliant director-choreographer-composer Bob Fosse, and the latter is an adaptation from his stage musical of the same name. As a matter of fact, the opening number in CHICAGO is "All That Jazz".

CHICAGO has, of course, enough of a rudimentary plot to cement together the dance numbers, which are the film's raison d'être. Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) is a wannabe dancer in 1930s Chicago, who idolizes Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones). However, both are arrested for murder, Roxie having gunned down a duplicitous lover after he reneges on a promise to introduce her to a friend who can get her into the Biz, and Velma for having whacked her husband and her sister when she caught the two in bed together. Thrown into Cook County Jail, both fall under the control of the jolly and corrupt Matron "Mama" Morton (Queen Latifah), and both retain the services of Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), a flamboyant lawyer who specializes in defending women accused of homicide, and who's never lost a case.

There aren't enough superlatives to describe CHICAGO, and I fear my review won't do it justice. Jones, a former dancer before she turned actress, struts her magnificent stuff beginning with the opening number ("All That Jazz"). Zellweger and Gere, neither hoofers by training, are seemingly miscast - but it works magnificently. All three sing and dance their way through the film in visually stunning choreographed numbers that had the audience clapping after each.

As Roxie and Velma worked their way through the criminal and judicial systems, the creators of CHICAGO were astoundingly clever in superimposing a musical version of each step in the process on the "real" one, for examples, the on-site police investigation of Roxie's crime ("Funny Honey"), Matron Morton's introductory speech to her new charges ("When You're Good to Mama"), Flynn's entrance ("All I Care About"), and Roxie's defense ("We Both Reached for the Gun"). My favorite comes during Roxie's trial when Flynn, more showman than counselor, displays his philosophy on defense strategy with the glitzy "Razzle Dazzle".

CHICAGO is loud, colorful, in-your-face, exuberant entertainment. I'd give it 10 stars if I could. And if you don't take the opportunity to see it while it's on the Big Screen at the beginning of 2003, then you're doing yourself a huge injustice. I beg you to see this film! I intend to see it at least once more, and will purchase the CD soundtrack and DVD when they're released.

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