Musical delight

The era of great Hollywood musicals comes back to town on Boxing Day with Chicago. Fifty years ago, in its heyday at MGM, it might have been done as well, though not with the full morality-busting amplification of this film. But for half that time, screen musicals have hardly been done at all, save for the serendipitous Moulin Rouge. Chicago sets that right. It's a custom-tailored, all-of-a-piece, great bit of entertainment.

It's rowdy, sassy, brash, brassy and raunchy, a burlesque of 1920s America that stars three performers who'd never be my first choice for allsingin', all-dancin' roles. But a miracle's happened. Here's Catherine Zeta-Jones dancing with all the slinkiness of Cyd Charisse as flapper girl Velma Kelly, who's just seen off her rat-fink husband and barely has time to wash his blood off the butt of her pistol before she's on the nightclub stage.

Here's Renèe Zellweger hitting the top notes of heartache and betrayal like Judy Garland, as Roxie Hart, another lady done wrong by her man and gunning him down in the middle of his "Wham, bam, no thank-you, ma'am" leer.

And here's 53-year-old Richard Gere hoofing it and tapdancing with Gene Kelly's insouciance as Billy Flynn, a Chicago lawyer whose flinty heart only sparks at the mention of money.

Director Rob Marshall has picked the right show for this virtuoso display. Chicago is a non-stop creation, hard-edged and high-glossed, without a single runny patch of sentiment. It satirises celebrity, burlesques justice and sends up civic morality in almost every one of its 112 minutes.

Murderesses Velma and Roxie are flung into cells on Death Row where Queen Latifah's Mama Morton, a wardress of mammoth girth and bottomless bribery, puts them in touch with Billy Flynn, a hot-shot attorney who makes it a point of profit never to defend the innocent - the guilty get more coverage.

While Velma smoulders like a femme fatale, the ingenious floozie Roxie hires him. He'll help her beat the murder rap by turning her into a celebrity. She'll walk out of court not just a free woman - but a famous one.

The film's style reflects the subversive sentiment that everything today is showbiz. No sooner does reality intrude than it's immediately reinterpreted in song-and-dance fantasy. Thus Gere in a shimmering sequined suit addresses the court with a mesmerising "Give 'em the old razzle-dazzle" number. Hitting a sticky bit of prosecution evidence, he literally tap-dances his way free of it.

In a stand-out number, he sets up a press conference with reporters panting for hot news, never the truth, and literally pulls the strings of a puppet press while Roxie sits on his lap like a ventriloquist's doll and he "works" her lips.

The song-and-dance numbers are triumphantly patterned on some of Busby Berkeley's classic routines. Girls pose in silhouette against the prison house's windows like figurines in a display cabinet. A male dance line holds up its arms and lets one of the heroines parade along the " catwalk" of their cupped palms.