Review of Chicago (2002) by Kat K — 31 May 2015

I feel like the spirit of Bob Fosse came back for one last party because his energy is all over this film. The film starts out fast and just keeps going from there and is a fantastic and fun film with absolutely perfect editing. Given the theme and feel, I did expect Roxie to be a bit different but she has her transformation the longer the film goes on, she was great as a puppet though, excellent makeup and acting there. When someone says her name in full, it did make me laugh, I was expecting someone to sing, 'Roxanne'; you would have thought that she would have stopped Amos saying things to the cop before it got too far, though. It did make me laugh that Billy called Amos, Andy, for obvious reasons. Richard Gere though, wow, he has spent a whole career with his co-stars winning Oscars all around him and I still can't believe he wasn't nominated, not just for this but in general. He was excellent in this film, just through and through, excellent, also I loved the way he said 'razzle dazzle'. Zeta-Jones, C. Reilly and Latifah were all excellent as well and just add up to a perfect cast that knock it out of the park.

I know the film is a satire and while I liked the story and found it interesting, as well as funny, I can't say that the theme of 'fame is fleeting' and corruption is particularly groundbreaking. When Lucy Liu is introduced it seems natural enough as to what happens next but when the ending happens with someone pulling out a gun on the street, it seemed rather fake, coupled with Roxie's newspaper, covered in water, on the street, however, like I said, it's supposed to be a satire, so that might be the point. I'm aware that some songs are supposed to be metaphors and some represent what a character is thinking but it did bother me that a very small fraction of the songs actually 'happened'. They're all good in their own right, very memorable and fun to watch, with the tap dance part being a particular highlight of what it is meant to represent in its scene, but it just feels like this gives more ammunition to those who think that musicals are pointless because of the singing and some could say they seem like somewhat of an afterthought. But then again, some could argue that if someone thinks like that, then that is their problem and not the film's, which is technically true.

I'm sure the success of 'Moulin Rouge!' certainly helped but I think this winning Best Picture was a perfect for its time, not only because it was an excellent film but because of what it has done. Besides the absolute train wreck that is the 75th Academy Awards, with 'Adaptation.' and 'About a Boy' not receiving more love, with 'Gangs of New York' not winning anything and the fact that 'The Pianist' won anything at all is completely 'erroneous', did you see what I did there? I know I'm in the minority, but this winning Best Picture seems right and the fact that '8 Mile' won its Oscar as well helped the musical revival become complete; however, given all this won, I thought it would have won Best Original Song as well, maybe it came in 2nd place, who knows? And hey, Nicole Kidman won an Oscar that year as well, woo. With its excellent music, excellent cinematography and editing and a great cast full of great performances, 'Chicago' is a fun film that I had a blast with, I mean, look at how short this review is, and I am glad that I have finally seen and is another film off of the list.