Chicago is a deep dish of overrated. It's probably one of the worst Oscar Best Picture winners out there. It's just didn't deserve that praise, with other great films in 2002. Titles like the Pianist, Lord of the Rings, the Hours, & Gangs of New York. Loosely based on a real life trial in the 1920's, the story of 'Chicago' is trite. The two main characters Velma Kelly play by Catherine Zeta Jones and Roxie Hart play by Renee Zellweger are unlikeable. The reasons why because they loved being famous for their crime of murdering people. The murders are not even justified. Velma Kelly is a chanteuse and tease whom killed her husband and sister after finding them in bed together. Roxie Hart kill her boyfriend because she was angry that she wasn't going to be famous. Both of these characters head to prison, and a trial set up. Lawyer Billy Flynn play by Richard Gene come up to defend Roxie Hart on the stand, while making a cat fight between her and Velma. This movie is just wrong to call it a period piece—It's become hopelessly anachronistic, apparently sliding anywhere from 1920 to 1945 in the middle of a scene. Cell Block Tango goes into a weird bondage dress dance number. Half the movie seems like an odd musical soft core T&A porno with Roxie and Velma being scantily clad with naughty girls in jail who need punishment. The dialogue is totally unnatural, the costumes hopelessly inauthentic. It presents a completely unbelievable view of prison life and period piece. Don't get me started, on the music. Chicago is hardly a movie at all, more felt like a filmed musical. There wasn't much added to the film version that couldn't have been done on stage, so technically, it's one of the best adaptations of a musical to a movie I've ever seen. I saw the original on broad way, and it looks like that, but films are supposed to felt bigger than the stage play. It just looks cheap having every musical number shot in a sparsely-decorated warehouse. Sadly it felt like a really bad stage play with well-known actors with little singing talent doing Broadway. Catherine Zeta Jones was OK in her semi-acting role. Catherine was energetic, captivating, convincing, and sings beautifully in the music acts like 'All that Jazz'. She had some Broadway's flair with Annie, that's shows in this role. I doubt that Renee Zellweger can hold a note or tune. Her singing sounds like yelling, in some songs like 'Name on Everyone's Lips'. 'Love and Devotion', you can barely understand, what's she saying with all that soft talk. I was afraid for Renee as for her bones through most of the dance numbers she looked so brittle that she would break. The musical numbers while all very skillful, got a bit stale after a while. I really liked Queen Latifah in this, but she shouldn't be nomination. Richard Gere was surprisingly good. Almost in his element, I'd say. The singing and dancing was all uniformly good. The puppet number stood out, to me, as the best performance and the most clever staging from both Renee and Gere in 'We both reach for the gun' number. "Mr. Cellophane" by John C. Reilly was a nice little surprise buried in the movie, but too quickly forgotten and overshadowed by more of the same brash numbers. He was the only likable character in the movie. The movie had way too many performances overall, not enough story. I never really cared about any of the characters enough to invest much in the film. The whole musical-as-fantasy-life thing was done, and done better, in Dancer in the Dark. A movie based on the stage musical doesn't make it a great movie. While Chicago has been on stage since time immemorial and has been watched by zillions of people, Chicago the movie wasn't that great. I'm not sorry I saw it. It was mostly filler for a couple hours, with a few high points and a few points of can we move on now? If the movie does that to somebody watching the film, then means that film didn't deserve winning Best Picture. Hand down.
Review of Chicago
