Renee steals the show

10 April 2012

We have had to wait far too long for Chicago to reach the screen. It first hit Broadway in 1975, the same year as A Chorus Line, filmed 17 years ago.

Pretty obviously, Chicago has gone into production now only because of the unexpected success last year of Moulin Rouge.

And what a pleasure it is to experience once again a colourful, well-written, imaginatively staged, superbly performed musical on the big screen!

Will it be a hit with a modern cinema audience? That's hard to predict, but it certainly deserves to be. I, for one, was razzle-dazzled.

This deliciously witty black comedy tells the story of Roxie Hart, a blonde flapper who kills her lover and becomes a celebrity, thanks to her unscrupulous lawyer (Richard Gere) and a jealous fellow murderess Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta Jones), whose help to Roxie is less than intentional.

The ever-photogenic Catherine Zeta-Jones certainly looks the part of the luscious but hard-bitten Velma, and can do Velma's silky bitchiness standing on her head - or a table.

She has all the dancing skills required, great legs and a strong (if not particularly expressive) singing voice.

But everything she does looks choreographed. She reminded me of Jane Mansfield struggling not to be eclipsed by Marilyn Monroe's star quality in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

There's nothing all that wrong with Zeta-Jones's performance; it's just that whenever Zellweger is on with her, it's Zellweger you watch.

Renee has the knack of making every choreographed move look as if she's only just thought of it. It's this spontaneity and joy in her own naughtiness that makes Roxie more than just another not-so-dumb blonde. This is easily the funniest, most charismatic performance by any actress this year.

Renee first caught the public eye with her portrayal of nice girls in Jerry Maguire and Bridget Jones's Diary. It's a shock at first to see her playing a murderous floozie with few scruples and tons of iron-clad ambition.

Wisely, Renee doesn't soften the character or sentimentalise her. Just as Nicole Kidman did in the black comedy To Die For, she makes her anti-heroine so energetic, sexy and outrageously lacking in shame that you can't help but extend your grudging admiration.

The first time I noticed the talent of Richard Gere was when he played the lead in a West End musical (Grease in

1973) and went on to play a season at the Young Vic the following year, so it's good to see him returning to his roots with so much enthusiasm.

His singing voice isn't the greatest - it's a bit thin and reedy - and his tapdancing is efficient rather than remarkable; but he has no problem playing an egocentric, cheerfully hypocritical lawyer.

Gere looks as if he's enjoying himself, and that makes the audience enjoy him too.

Director Rob Marshall occasionally betrays his lack of experience in the cinema - this is his debut and he's come up from being a choreographer on American TV.

His biggest fault lies in being overbusy. Some of the numbers would have benefited from less frenetic editing and a greater willingness to allow the dancers to show off their paces.

However, Marshall's staging of the songs is done with high style. His pacy storytelling moves cleverly and seamlessly between the naturalism of oldfashioned prison movies and the stylised presentation of a musical cabaret.

Most of my doubts about Chicago are really reservations about the musical itself. It's so totally heartless that it doesn't really involve the emotions; and any musical that tries to exist without at least one romantic ballad can certainly be accused of superficiality and a lack of warmth.

The film pretends to have something to say about the fickle nature of celebrity and the public's amoral appetite for it, but as social satire it lacks the bite of Andrew Niccol's Simone.

are the songs particularly memorable. The best ones are All That Jazz, Cell Block Tango and Razzle Dazzle, all productionnumbers rather than standards. The best thing about the movie is that it stages these numbers with an enormous amount of flair and showmanship.

Chicago's basic deficiencies mean that it may not quite rank up there in the top ten classic musicals, but it still manages to offer 107 minutes of thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.