Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Chicago (2002)
Director: Rob Marshall
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Kander and Ebb's Roaring '20s retro-chic stage musical, adapted by Bill Condon, centres on antagonistic murderesses Roxie Hart (Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones), and shyster attorney Billy Flynn (Gere), to whom each turns hoping to regain liberty. Velma was already a showgirl; Roxie simply dreams of seeing her name in lights. And the show follows her example by imagining reality in terms of stylised song 'n' dance numbers. How you react to the overriding 'life's a show' metaphor - I found it slick, cynical and superficial - will matter less than how you like the tunes, the hoofing and the translation of a brazenly theatrical piece into cinema. The razzmatazz songs display a certain nostalgic facility, and the leads give them all they've got. But Marshall betrays the dancing by never letting us see it properly. The alternating between glitzy fantasy and unconvincing drab reality is also handled clumsily, so it's left to individual sequences to carry the day. Renée and Richard's courtroom interrogation scene rated best, and much of the rest is, well, energetic.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Rob Marshall
Producer: Martin Richards
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John C Reilly, Lucy Liu, Taye Diggs, Colm Feore, Christine Baranski, Dominic West, Chita Rivera full cast
Genre(s): Musicals
Duration: 113 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now