Volume CXXXII, Number 12 January 24, 2003 f

Broadway in Chicago
MONICA GUZMAN
COLUMNIST

This is the Hollywood actor's ultimate talent show, headed up by newfound divas Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger, in stagy leotards and fishnets, belting it out harder than Bridget Jones ever did. It's not a drama, a comedy, a chick flick, or a thriller, but a rarely seen genre spectacle. Ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment, Hollywood proudly presents the amazing, state-of-the-art, hyper-realistic…modern musical! (Applause).

Enjoy this little taste of novelty while you still can, because only one significantly popular musical seems to come out each year, if any at all: Moulin Rouge in 2001, Dancer in the Dark in 2000…South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut in 1999?

In any case, it's a meager dose, redeemed only by its excellent record come awards season; last year's installment got eight Golden Globe nominations and won three, while this year's received three out of seven, including Best Picture: Musical or Comedy. Not too shabby for a first-time director, not to mention a whole cast of first-time singers.

Chicago is a story about getting away with murder...in style. Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) is a heartless murderess with dreams of stardom on Chicago's jazz stage. After killing her lover in cold blood she faces a possible execution after a long stay in a women's prison. Her idol, singer Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), is confidently awaiting trial for some of her own bad girl behavior. Things look bleak for Roxie until she hires Velma's lawyer, the famous Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), who turns her into a sympathetic media celebrity, tugging on public heartstrings in a jazzy spectacle that ultimately rips the blindfold right off of Justice herself.

Now, don't get me wrong; everyone involved in this film was phenomenal in their own, musical way. But by no one's standards did Richard Gere "act" better than Nicolas Cage in Adaptation, or Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love. His rendition of "Razzle Dazzle" beat out Sandler's "Lunch Lady Land" in overall male vocal performance, sure, but that doesn't make him worthy of the gilded goblet he received.

On another note, Queen Latifah, though she can sing like no other and managed to say her twenty lines in Chicago with a certain amount of flair, is not in the same boat as her fellow Supporting Actress nominees. Her performance was good, but not award good.

Renée Zellweger as Roxie Hart-now that went beyond Global merit right into Oscar territory. She's proven once again her versatility as an actress, able to leap from romantic tart (Jerry Maguire) to depressed singleton (Bridget Jones's Diary) to this year's bad starlet in a single bound-or six years-with some unfortunate comic pitfalls in between, whatever.

Same could be said for Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose vampy vigor showed just as well in her eyes and her moves as in her lines. This is a story without heroes, and, true to form, every character, from our sly little lawyer to Roxie's husband, the pathetically gullible Mr. Cellophane (John C. Reilly), is deliciously despicable, a trait the cast pulls off wonderfully.

Probably the most important element in film musicals is the look. Unless it's cinematically ravishing, exploiting everything that film has to offer, the whole thing may come off looking like a couple of cameramen taped it straight from Broadway, which would make it pretty stupid and useless, not to mention a huge waste of both filmmakers' and viewers' precious time. But Marshall got right down to the nitty gritty, the skeletal screenplay, and played around with structure, editing, and other celluloid polish to make this old story shine again, even brighter than before.

The cutting room replaces scene changes and the greater speed and flexibility of this movie musical gives a more narrow and potent sense of excitement.

The result is edge-of-your-seat musical mayhem that doesn't quite give you time to take it all in, until the very end when you slowly stand up and let out a long, satisfied sigh. Chicago will make you want to break into the nearest costume closet, make off with a glittery white leotard, slick your hair, wear your buckle shoes…and all that jazz.

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