Chicago
Last year, the movie world was abuzz with the arrival of Moulin Rouge and the return of the musical to the modern cinema. This year’s must-see musical is Chicago, based on the Broadway hit. Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) has been charged with murder after she shot her lover when he failed to live up to his promise to provide connections to the theatre scene. She’s thrown into a prison for women, where she meets her idol, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), also charged for murder. Into the mix is Kelly's hot-shot lawyer, Billy Flynn, played by Richard Gere. He’s never lost a murder trial as long as he gets paid. When he sees Hart’s story would play greater in the Chicago media than Kelly's would, he agrees to take her case with the help of her naïve husband’s hard-earned money.

Truly, I’ve been turned off by the musical. As a kid, I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a great story mired by the terrible songs they were forced to sing. Whenever I watch it, I have to change the channel when they’re singing. But Chicago succeeds on so many levels. Its songs have meaning. Its songs are catchy. Its songs are sung reasonably well. It also leads to a tempo for the movie as if it itself was one big song, with its high beginnings and its low but defining ending. Its serious scenes have a light touch just as it should be because fundamentally, it’s such a ridiculous story that in any sane forum, we just have to laugh. It’s all to keep us entertained, mimicking what the media wanted to do in the film to get the public to keep buying newspapers. 4 stars