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Chicago, one hell of a town
Jan. 3rd, 2003 06:35 pmIf you like West End/Broadway musicals, you will probably like this movie. Chicago is the film version of a Broadway production starring Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta Jones and Richard Gere. The music is jazzy and catchy and i had to restrain myself from doing a few whirls and a wide armed twirl down the aisle when i dunked my rubbish in the bin in time to the closing credit music :))) Most of the musical sequences, aside from the first and the last are dreams or fantasies but it still works.
Catherine ZJ is Velma Kelly, a stage star who killed her sister and her husband for fooling around behind her back. Renee is Roxy Hart, a chorus girl who wants to be a star. She kills a man who promised her an introduction to a famous club owner but finds out he was only after a piece of her far to thin ass. She lands in the same jail as Velma and both of them have hired Billy Flynn, (Richard Gere), a rich lawyer that knows how to work a jury and how to work the media and puts it all to work in this movie. The best numbers for me were the one that portrays Roxy and all the members of the media as puppets, whose strings are ably pulled by Billy and the tap dance number as Billy flummoxes the jury with Razzle Dazzle.
It's Roxy's story mainly, and about how the media is manipulated into being a manipulator. The era is the 1920's but it's just as relevant today. The music is great, the costumes glitter and the dance numbers are spectacularly Broadway. It's painfully obvious how skeletally thin Renee is, with no figure to speak of,in a dance number with Catherine who is a real stunner. John C. Reilly plays Roxy's hapless cuckolded husband, Amos, the Transparent Man in a small but pretty good supporting role and Queen Latifah, as Mama Mason, the prison warden, is another fabulous supporting role with a shining musical number with curves that put all the women to shame :)
I can't really think of anything i didn't like about the movie. All the performances were spot on. All of the principals put in very good performances on the dance floor including a surprising one from Richard Gere. I don't think it came easy for him but he looked like he was having fun. I was too. I may even get the soundtrack. If you like musicals, go for it. To paraphrase a friend of mine, It pees on Moulin Rouge from a great height! 10/10~
Catherine ZJ is Velma Kelly, a stage star who killed her sister and her husband for fooling around behind her back. Renee is Roxy Hart, a chorus girl who wants to be a star. She kills a man who promised her an introduction to a famous club owner but finds out he was only after a piece of her far to thin ass. She lands in the same jail as Velma and both of them have hired Billy Flynn, (Richard Gere), a rich lawyer that knows how to work a jury and how to work the media and puts it all to work in this movie. The best numbers for me were the one that portrays Roxy and all the members of the media as puppets, whose strings are ably pulled by Billy and the tap dance number as Billy flummoxes the jury with Razzle Dazzle.
It's Roxy's story mainly, and about how the media is manipulated into being a manipulator. The era is the 1920's but it's just as relevant today. The music is great, the costumes glitter and the dance numbers are spectacularly Broadway. It's painfully obvious how skeletally thin Renee is, with no figure to speak of,in a dance number with Catherine who is a real stunner. John C. Reilly plays Roxy's hapless cuckolded husband, Amos, the Transparent Man in a small but pretty good supporting role and Queen Latifah, as Mama Mason, the prison warden, is another fabulous supporting role with a shining musical number with curves that put all the women to shame :)
I can't really think of anything i didn't like about the movie. All the performances were spot on. All of the principals put in very good performances on the dance floor including a surprising one from Richard Gere. I don't think it came easy for him but he looked like he was having fun. I was too. I may even get the soundtrack. If you like musicals, go for it. To paraphrase a friend of mine, It pees on Moulin Rouge from a great height! 10/10~
