Top: Valma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) shows her pizzazz Below: Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) enlists Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) in her quest to become a big-time chorus girl.

Chorus of approval
Chicago

Stars Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere. Rated M.

Reviewer :: PTE Simone Heyer

Who can resist watching a Broadway musical in all the comfort of your local cinema? I know I can’t, and I didn’t.

Chicago is a fun, very musical film with all the costumes and razzle dazzle expected of a stage musical.

Zeta-Jones, perhaps surprisingly, has an amazing voice, as does Zellweger. I was shocked though when Gere tilted his head back for a bit of a croon as well. He should stick to the non-singing roles.

Set in the roaring ’20s, Chicago is the story of chorus girl wanna-be Roxie Hart (Zellweger), who shoots her lover. Despite her acting efforts, she lands in jail where she meets her chorus-girl idol, Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones).

Kelly has killed her husband and sister and is locked up with all the comforts of home and the special attention of the head guard.

Kelly knows how to use the media – and her lawyer Billy Flynn (Gere) – to her best advantage, gaining the public’s support for a not-guilty verdict. Hart clues on to this and is soon playing the same game better than the original.

Hart dreams of dancing and singing her way to become a big-time chorus girl and, with the help of Flynn’s manipulation and her own cunning, she has her estranged husband and the media singing her praises.

The majority of the film is set in the prison they’re confined to, therefore a dark, broody atmosphere and convenient props.
Of course, there is plenty of singing – if you think that because it’s a film it will be less than a musical, you’re dead wrong.

But, the partially clad dancers make up for it in places. The lean bodies of the female dancers might be enough to start women viewers on a dance craze.

In the end, everybody is happy and Kelly and Hart join forces to amaze and delight and all that jazz.
Not a bad film.

THE Big Irish Git has been banned from film reviews for the next few months because there’s nothing he loves more than a blokey movie and I think the rest of the ADF needs a look in, too. In truth, he’s away restoring his core Guinness levels in his motherland. He’ll be back with more blokey films mid-June.

Reviewer PTE Simone Heyer rates this movie three stars