Movie Reviews

I'll probably get berated for this, but I didn't care for Chicago as much as a lot of people seemed to have. Don't get me wrong, I certainly felt that it was a fun and entertaining movie, but it didn't quite approach "greatness" for me.

The plot is fairly basic: Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) murders the man she's been having an affair with, and is sent to the "all female" ward of death row. With the help of her gullible husband Amos (John C. Reilly), she is able to acquire the services of the famous lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere). Flynn has managed to acquit every single one of his female death-row clients by molding them into something of a celebrity and boosting the public's sympathy towards them. Roxie, who has aspired for stardom for almost her entire life, gets so wrapped up in her celebrity status that she ends up doing almost anything to maintain it.

Anyway, the plot is mainly there to support the various songs throughout the movie. It was kind of neat how all the musical numbers are presented as Roxie's daydream-type fantasies, and it's made clear that the musical numbers themselves never actually take place in 'real life'. The sequences themselves are generally pretty good -- a couple of them verging on great. The one thing I'm not sure I was too fond of though is the theatrical-style staging, by which most of the musical sequences take place in an isolated, stage-like setting. On the one hand, it was cool to see what was essentially a 'theatrical' performance heightened by film's ability to use creative editting techniques, but on the other hand, I would've preffered if the music sequences had 'broken away' more from their theatrical confines. A finicky complaint, I suppose, but still...

Despite that, though, there were two particular sequences that I totally loved. One of them involved Roxie doing a solo number on a dark stage with a bunch of mirrors and a giant neon sign. The other is John C. Reilly's solo performance of the song "Mr. Cellophane". Everything about that sequence is exceptional, from the lighting, to the costume, the cinematography, and Reilly's singing. It's standing out to me right now as one of the single best scenes I've witnessed in a long time. I also enjoyed the puppet sequence very much, but I really didn't care for Gere's early solo number, nor Queen Latifah's solo.

So all in all, Chicago is a thoroughly enjoyable film, though I'm a little dissappointed at how I didn't enjoy it as much as a lot of other people seemed to.