Review of All That Jazz (1979) by Xander S — 04 Mar 2015

It's not at all fair for a movie this egotistical to be this good. But unlike other cinematic ego trips (here's lookin' at you, Branagh and Wiseau), "All That Jazz" is beautifully crafted in just about every other way.

From Roy Scheider's riveting performance as Joe Gideon (a thinly veiled, or rather barely veiled, version of director Bob Fosse) to the dancing, from the editing to the lighting, this movie is so well-constructed and tongue-in-cheek that its excessive, self-indulgent side can be overlooked.

Structurally, it weaves cleverly in and out of a real world more believable than anything in the last thirty years of screen musicals, and a dream world in which Jessica Lange, as a white-clad symbol of death (a role that, for some reason, she nails, eerily foreshadowing her turn as Tamora in "Titus"), asks Joe questions about his life and gradually tries to ferry him across the river of death.

But you'd better believe he's not going without... an escalating succession of sequin-infused musical numbers! Ben Vereen stops by for some fun, and, in one of cinema's more memorable moments, there's a scantily-dressed, impeccably choreographed pansexual frolic--Fosse style! It's a movie that, once you seen, you will never believe, a kind of 70s, postmodern, autobiographical twist on "Carousel" that just pops like crazy.