Chicago
October 2003 Reviewed by: Wes Phillips Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Chicago is a picture-perfect demonstration of how to successfully transfer a so-so play into a spectacular film.

As a Broadway musical, it was never a stupendous artistic success. Oh, it had a fine book and score from Fred Ebb, John Kandor, and Bob Fosse, but the play lacked the coherent passion that had illuminated the same team’s Cabaret.

One of the ways that Cabaret trumped Chicago on stage was that the songs and dances were presented as the entertainment of the decadent Berlin nightclub, the Kit-Kat Club. Not only did they comment upon and mirror the dramatic action, they were a natural extension of the world created by the narrative. Chicago, on the other hand, was a "straight" musical (no puns please!), where the action was stopped for various songs and dance routines. Granted, it was all good stuff; however, it was just not that different from something you might have seen on Broadway in the 1930s.

In fact, except for the trademark superheated choreography by Fosse, it was exactly like something you might have seen on Broadway in 1926 -- at least that's when Maurine Dallas Watkins' play Chicago (or The Brave Little Woman) began its run. It was made into a silent film by Cecil B. De Mille and, later, into a talkie, Roxie Hart, starring Ginger Rogers before getting the Kandor/Ebb/Fosse treatment.

In bringing Chicago to the big screen, first-time director Rob Marshall had a brilliant idea. It certainly was not his first -- Marshall had already revived Cabaret on Broadway with phenomenal success by staging it in Studio 54's deserted space. By putting theatergoers in the Kit-Kat Club, Marshall took a successful play and bumped it up a notch. With the help of screenwriter Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters), he set out to do the same with Chicago.

The bones of the story concern Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger), an ambitious singer/dancer who badly wants a show-biz career. She's married to Amos (John C. Reilly), a hard-working guy, and has a lover (Dominic West) who has promised to set her up with a big audition. When she finds out he's married and does not intend to further her career, she pumps him full of lead and ends up in the clink, awaiting trial.

Even there, Roxy finds her star eclipsed. There's already a celebrity husband killer in prison, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and she has the best lawyer in town: Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), a specialist in the old razzle-dazzle. When Amos coughs up Flynn's rather hefty fee, the crafty lawyer begins to transform the ambitious Roxie into a poor, misunderstood victim.

It is a cynical tale -- one that shares the worldview of The Front Page in many ways (Maurine Dallas Watkins had, after all, worked as a journalist at about the same time as Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur). But even in an age as cynical as ours, it takes more than that to light up a story. Marshall and Condon's stroke of brilliance was to internalize all the musical numbers into Roxy's overblown imagination. The song and dance numbers compose the meat of the movie -- they frame the story that's now shoehorned into the leftover spaces. The concept works brilliantly, allowing Marshall to establish a glitzy, kinetic, streamlined narrative that keeps everything flowing seamlessly from one production number to the next.

In this, he is aided by some brilliant performances. Zellweger is not a fantastic singer or dancer, but then Roxy isn't supposed to be very good. Gere's singing works well enough, and his hoofing is serviceable, if not impressive, but he's probably as good as the next lawyer. Besides, he brings a conspiratorial wink to the proceedings that makes his vocal and terpsichorean shortcomings seem like part of his plan. The real star power rests in Zeta-Jones, who gives Velma some high-wattage star power, and Queen Latifah, who very nearly steals the show with her sassy, Sophie Tuckeresque turn in "When You're Good to Mama" -- and with some assured underacting in her role as the prison's anything-for-a-buck warden.

The DVD's transfer is va-va-vivid. It will make your eyes pop with its clarity and color. The sound is first-rate, too. The Dolby Digital soundtrack is impressive, but the DTS track is mind-bogglingly immersive. It's a pip.

As to DVD extras, this disc isn't packed, but what it has is choice. The "Making of Chicago" feature is actually interesting for a change and not just a 30-minute commercial for the film, while the almost obligatory cut scene is riveting -- as is the director's reason for dropping it from the movie (it couldn't have taken place in Roxie's imagination).

There is also extremely involving commentary by Marshall and Condon concerning their process in parsing the play and prepping it for the screen. Classy stuff.

Chicago is one of those rare big-budget movies that takes chances and works. Razzle-dazzle? There's a lot of it here, but it's all backed up by talent, intelligence, and daring -- and all that jazz.

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