‘Chicago’

Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones bring the songs, snappy tone and show biz-y wordplay from Broadway to the silver screen.   [PG-13]

By: Elise Nakhnikian
   The best place to see Chicago is on Broadway, where the mix of black humor, raw energy and talent in the long-running musical is potent enough to get you high. But if you can’t make it into the city, the movie is good for a mild buzz.
   Chicago newspaperwoman Maurine Watkins’ eerily relevant Jazz Age work was updated by director-choreographer Bob Fosse in the ’70s. When it debuted, media feeding frenzies over murders involving beautiful young women and sexual betrayal happened only in cities like Chicago. Today they’re as close as the nearest TV, whether you’re in New York’s Manhattan or the one in Kansas.

"Catherine
Catherine Zeta-Jones leads a song-and-dance number in the film adaptation of Chicago.


   Chicago centers around Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, two would-be stars who are going nowhere fast until they commit murder in a city where, as their cynical jail matron puts it, "murder’s a form of entertainment." Latching onto the same slick lawyer, the two compete for the attention of a scandal-hungry press and turn misfortune into fame.
   The Broadway staging of the story roars into action when the curtain comes up and never slows down, propelled by sinuous Fosse dance moves and savvy songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, the duo who wrote the book for Cabaret and Zorba. The movie starts with a similar rush of energy but can’t always maintain the pace.
   The songs from Fosse’s musical are still there, along with the snappy tone and show biz-y wordplay that distinguish much of the dialogue. The play’s jaunty cynicism about our justice system and media also travels intact, as in the bleakly funny sequence where Roxie’s lawyer, Billy Flynn, plays the reporters covering her case like marionettes. So does its faith in how far good behavior will get you: The only member of the murderesses’ row in Roxie and Velma’s jail who gets hanged for the crime is the one who is actually innocent.
   Director and choreographer Rob Marshall, who directed critically acclaimed stage versions of Rent and Annie, rolls out some nice new tricks to adapt the musical for the screen, melding the staged numbers into the action by presenting most as the fantasies of stagestruck Roxie. Those dreams gleam with an old-school glamour, thanks to Colleen Atwood’s shimmering costumes and Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer’s dramatic lighting.
   The minor characters shine too. As sob-sister reporter Mary Sunshine, Christine Baranski is equal parts arsenic and old lace, and the elegant Taye Diggs is superhumanly composed as the bandleader who introduces Roxie’s fantasies. Best of all is John C. Reilly, who played an equally sad-sack husband in this year’s The Good Girl, as Roxie’s dumb, devoted husband. There’s been a lot of hype about Oscars in connection with Chicago, but if there’s no nomination for Reilly, Velma was right when she said "there ain’t no justice in this world."
   But a sizeable puncture keeps slowing down the pace. The stars who play the three main roles seem well suited to the parts. As Roxie, a perpetually conniving sociopath convinced of her own innocence, Renee Zellweger is particularly good, using the contrast between her baby-doll face, pleading voice and toned body to play "a cookie full of arsenic," as Sweet Smell of Success’s J.J. Hunsecker would say. But none of the three can both sing and dance, and that’s a handicap this musical can’t quite overcome.
   Zellweger has a pleasant enough voice, but her dancing consists mainly of striking poses or stalking down runways. Richard Gere, who plays Billy, acquits himself honorably in his big tap dance, but his singing voice is thin and expressionless. And to watch Catherine Zeta-Jones lumber through a routine as Velma is to develop a whole new appreciation for the feline grace Bebe Neuwirth brought to the part. Neuwirth’s sleek sociopath was chillingly self-contained, while Zeta-Jones’ sweating striver works too hard at capturing the spotlight to make us believe she ever owned it.
   The press kit makes much of the weeks the actors spent in rehearsal before filming. Unfortunately, that effort sometimes shows. The camera keeps cutting away or zooming in for close-ups during song-and-dance numbers to camouflage the lack of finesse.
   Chicago is at its best when the supporting cast has the stage. Reilly’s "Mr. Cellophane" routine is poignance personified, and the "six merry murderesses" who strut from the jail onto Roxie’s imaginary stage for their bloodthirsty anthem, "He Had It Comin’," get the movie’s engine racing again. Strutting like panthers on the prowl, they sing contemptuously about men who deserved to die for popping their gum too loudly or being too jealous over a few little flings, while a phalanx of dancers behind them writhes against stylized cell bars. Zeta-Jones snarls loudly enough to hold her own as one of the six, and if her dance moves aren’t much, there’s more than enough action to distract us from one lackluster performance.
   It’s like Billy sings, in "Razzle Dazzle":
   Long as you keep ’em way off balance/
   How can they spot that you got no talents?
Rated PG-13. Contains sexual content and dialogue, violence and thematic events.