THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13,2003
MUSIC FILM
12 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN *13
THURSDAY,FEBRUARY 13,2003
'Chicago'reinventsmoviemusicalgenre
REVIEW
Stephen Shupe
sshupe@kansan.com
The movie musical made a near-comeback two years ago with Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. That was a film I found unendurable, but at least it has opened the floodgates for Rob Marshall's Chicago, a far more entertaining (and blessedly sane) "reinvention" of Hollywood's golden oldie.
I think the musical will stay an oldie, even if Chicago wins the Academy Award. Marshall takes fewer risks than his film's wide acclaim would seem to promise and this ultra-light piece of movie fluff won't linger in the memory long.
As the camera prowls through a night-club seething with sex and Al Capone's illegal booze, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who's running a little late because she's just murdered her husband and her sister because of an illicit affair, hurries onto the stage. Zeta-Jones looks great in black lace and leather boots, and when she breaks into song, there's an intense sexuality to her presence.
Across town there's another crime of passion unraveling, this one with Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) and Roxie's mouth boyfriend, Fred Casely (Dominic West). Women here seem to wipe out their
lovers and rivals like herds of cattle.
Velma and Roxie are hauled off to jail to await trial under the supervision of Matron "Mama" Morton (Queen Latifah), an only-in-the-movies black-lady warden of a Prohibition-era cellblock. Star-hungry Roxie confides in cool-hearted Velma, and when Roxie's charges get completely dismissed, she escapes into her thoughts, where everyone sings and dances to her whimsy.
The movie has become famous for this idea about Roxie's imagination — the musical numbers feel more spontaneous because they're all in her head. But I thought this was an original idea when Lars Von Trier used it three years ago with Björk in Dancer in the Dark. That was a
daring and emotionally galvanizing musical, one that could have sent the genre off in an interesting new direction had it been given more attention.
Regardless of whether Chicago's choreographers are originals or rip-off artists, Marshall's instincts keep even the movie's most exhilarating sequences from transcending their inherent theatricality.
If Roxie dreamed up these song-and-dance routines, the girl might have a promising career in theater directing, but not necessarily one in filmmaking. Marshall is good with dazzling flashes of light but he never relinquishes himself or his actors from the safety net of stage direction.
Surprisingly, the guys end up stealing the show. As the playboy lawyer Billy Flynn, who gives rise to Roxie's stardom, Richard Gere turns in one of his best performances.
Gere usually looks so nervous I often wonder if a domineering father figure is staring him down behind the camera, but his singing and his acting in Chicago have a velvety magnetism, as if the actor were channeling James Cagney from one of the all-time great musicals, Yankee Doodle Dandy. And as Roxie's sweet but dim husband Amos, John C. Reilly shines in one of the movie's few moving numbers, "Mr. Cellophane."
CHICAGO ... B-
Starring: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee
Zellweger and Richard Gere
Rated PG-13 for sexual content and dialogue, violence
Playing at South Wind 12 Theatres, 3433 Iowa St.
Everybody here can sing and dance just swell, which is more than could be said for Moulin Rouge. But why this is the favorite to win the Oscar is beyond me.
Certainly it lacks the spectacle of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the thunder of Gangs of New York and the cleansing spirit of Spike Lee's Sept. 11 tone poem, 25th Hour. Evidently the Academy wants its winners to comfortably play riffs on familiar territory, not to recklessly break new ground, and Chicago fits the bill like great jazz played by rank amateurs.
Shupe is an Augusta graduate student in journalism.