Chicago

SYNOPSIS

It took more than a quarter of a century to bring the 1975 musical Chicago to the screen, but it was worth the wait to get it right. In this spirited film adaptation, Renée Zellweger stars as Roxie Hart, the ambitious newcomer who dreams of singing and dancing in one of the city's jazz clubs, and Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Velma, the established performer. After the shootings of a lover and a faithless husband, they end up in prison and discover that the publicity surrounding a capital murder case can be a boon to a career in showbusiness. Director Rob Marshall licks the problem of how to film a musical that was presented as vaudeville on stage - it's closer to that style of short scenes and "turns" than to conventional musical comedy - by re-creating the musical numbers as fantasies in Roxie's head. He loses none of the energy of the stage version nor its dark subtext on the corrupting nature of stardom. Oscar-nominated Zellweger is perfect casting despite - or perhaps even because of - her inexperience in the genre, while the Oscar-winning Zeta-Jones sings and high-kicks as if born on Broadway.