The rather dubious winner of the 2002 best picture Oscar is as shallow a film as you can find, but the slick musical numbers more than make up for lack of depth through sheer exuberance. Renee Zellweger plays Roxie Hart, a neglected housewife with dreams of returning to her abandoned career on the stage. When she attempts to sleep her way back into show business, her dreams are shattered when her lover turns out to be no more than a predatory furniture salesman, and when he dismisses her she pumps him full of lead.
The cast are all obviously having a great time - Although initially I thought Zellweger was hopelessly miscast, her usual nervous sweetness here hides a ruthless and calculating attention seeker. Catherine Zeta-Jones uses her killer combination of slightly brash attitude, killer figure and aggressive sexuality and a belter of a voice to near steal the film as Velma Kelly, the incarcerated stage star whose publicity Roxie steals.
Rob Marshall missed out on a directing award and it's clear to see why - The choreography is very slick with enough dizzyingly edited flesh on view to make it genuinely raunchy for a modern MTV crowd but with very well performed musical numbers and well staged performances for fans of the stories previous incarnations on stage and screen. However it lacks the cinematic flair of something like Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" and the real life scenes are largely uninspired. The decision to make the musical numbers as "fantasies" I found effective, and commented on the plot well.
It's also quite refreshing to see a musical that is at it's core deeply cynical - rather than the sickly optimism often associated with the genre. Billy Flynn controls Roxie and the press like puppets, in perhaps the most striking musical sequence. In another scene, a girl's very real execution by hanging is contrasted with her performing an acrobatic rope act to rapturous applause. Billy creates a frenzy of media attention around Roxie's inexcusable criminal action and the final scene is a suitably sly dig at show business. Velma assures Roxie that the fact they hate each other shouldn't stop them performing, and they take to the stage to great applause, ending in an act where they use imitation machine guns to form their names in lights.
It is in this respect that Marshall's film seems most uncertain. He seems too fond of all the showbiz glitz of his cast and the song and dance numbers to wholeheartedly create a subversive and cynical film, attacking the superficiality of celebrity, the media, the public and the strikingly amoral women's revenge theme. The film is undeniably entertaining, but not as lethal as it might have been.
The cast are all obviously having a great time - Although initially I thought Zellweger was hopelessly miscast, her usual nervous sweetness here hides a ruthless and calculating attention seeker. Catherine Zeta-Jones uses her killer combination of slightly brash attitude, killer figure and aggressive sexuality and a belter of a voice to near steal the film as Velma Kelly, the incarcerated stage star whose publicity Roxie steals.
Rob Marshall missed out on a directing award and it's clear to see why - The choreography is very slick with enough dizzyingly edited flesh on view to make it genuinely raunchy for a modern MTV crowd but with very well performed musical numbers and well staged performances for fans of the stories previous incarnations on stage and screen. However it lacks the cinematic flair of something like Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" and the real life scenes are largely uninspired. The decision to make the musical numbers as "fantasies" I found effective, and commented on the plot well.
It's also quite refreshing to see a musical that is at it's core deeply cynical - rather than the sickly optimism often associated with the genre. Billy Flynn controls Roxie and the press like puppets, in perhaps the most striking musical sequence. In another scene, a girl's very real execution by hanging is contrasted with her performing an acrobatic rope act to rapturous applause. Billy creates a frenzy of media attention around Roxie's inexcusable criminal action and the final scene is a suitably sly dig at show business. Velma assures Roxie that the fact they hate each other shouldn't stop them performing, and they take to the stage to great applause, ending in an act where they use imitation machine guns to form their names in lights.
It is in this respect that Marshall's film seems most uncertain. He seems too fond of all the showbiz glitz of his cast and the song and dance numbers to wholeheartedly create a subversive and cynical film, attacking the superficiality of celebrity, the media, the public and the strikingly amoral women's revenge theme. The film is undeniably entertaining, but not as lethal as it might have been.