Chicago

The story here started out in 1926 as a play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, eventually became William Wellman’s cynical film satire Roxie Hart (1942), then resurfaced as a stage musical by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. This Oscar-laden movie rendition, directed by Rob Marshall, suffers from the kind of ants-in-your-pants MTV editing that prevents you from simply watching and enjoying the musical numbers. I seem to be in a distinct minority in finding the satire toothless, obvious, and insufferably glib, the songs by John Kander and Ebb forgettable, and the Bill Condon script, though inventive as a film adaptation, neither clever enough nor relevant to anything in particular. Still, I got real pleasure from seeing the principalsCatherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, and John C. Reillymake their way through the song-and-dance numbers. 116 min. (JR) Read more