CHICAGO

The melodies, the costumes, the tap dancing: for all its traditional show-stopping elements, “Chicago” is definitely not your mother’s musical.

Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Richard Gere star in this 1920’s story of bad girls gone worse. Zellweger plays Roxie Hart, a shameless adulteress desperate to find fame on the vaudeville stage. After her lover reneges on a promise to set her up in showbiz, Roxie follows in the footsteps of her idol, Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones), and murders him—ending up in Kelly’s same cell block to await her trial. Billy Flynn (Gere) is the flashy lawyer both ladies retain to mount their defense.

Following the trend from last year’s reinvention of the musical, “Moulin Rouge”, “Chicago” is stacked with glittering, glamorous numbers. The problem is the “PG-13” rating, which is hugely misleading considering the sensual nature of the songs, story, and choreography. In fact, the opening sex scene between Zellweger and a man not her husband would have been enough for me to bump it to “R”. Like many of the dresses worn to the Golden Globes awards, these ladies may not technically be naked, but hey, who are we kidding here? Also, the movie appears to celebrate the immorality of all its characters, implying “it may be wrong, but if you look good doing it…” Certainly not a message endorsed by Christ.

However, I have to admit that the artistic direction in songs like “They Both Reached for the Gun,” where Gere literally acts as the puppeteer of his client and the press, is particularly brilliant. And the satirical tone taken in the song, “Razzle Dazzle Them” truly speaks to the fallibility of the judicial system and, frankly, the flashiness often rewarded in the legal profession (one could easily picture Johnny Cochran performing Gere’s “tap dance”).

Both Queen Latifa and John C. Reilly turn in engaging supporting performances, and it was nice to see a woman with Latifa’s figure treated as attractive—unlike Kathy Bates, whose physique in “About Schmidt” was used as a way to draw gasps of shock from the audience.

Unfortunately, though it is fun to watch Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones (two women whose faces are constantly plastered across the celluloid press) compete for a little newspaper coverage, “Chicago” succeeds in making iniquity look cool. Nobody learns any lasting lessons in this film, save, perhaps, for Zellweger’s long-suffering husband who learns that being a decent, loyal spouse makes him a chump. If you do go see “Chicago”, remind yourself, God will not be mocked and, someday, the consequences for ladies like these will come home to roost.

Year of Release—2002