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Chicago
on DVD (2002)
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| Starring: |
Catherine Zeta Jones, Dominic West, Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, Christine Baranski, John C. Reilly, Lucy Liu, Taye Diggs, Colm Feore |
| Director: |
Rob Marshall |
| Studio: |
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAINMENT |
| Run time: |
109 mins |
| Certificate: |
 |
| User collections: |
Musicals that aren't lame, Is it me? Films I've taken a serious dislike to., Films that make you say "wow...", 1001 Movies YMSBYD Part 10, Most over-rated films of all time, My cup of tea, Must See Musicals, All of my favourites!, Academy Award Winners: Best Picture, OVERRATED / UNDERRATED |
| Genres: |
Audio Descriptive, Music/Musical |
| Languages: |
English, English Audio Description |
| Hearing-impaired: |
English |
| Released: |
04/08/2003
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| Also Available on: |
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Brief synopsis of Chicago
This Hollywood adaptation of the classic Broadway musical sparkles with glamour and reverberates with the energy of good, old-fashioned song and dance. As the film leaps into its first riveting act, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), one half of the famous number she performs with her sister, arrives at the night club late, dishevelled, and with blood on her hands. Nonetheless, she goes onstage unhindered and wows the crowd with her shimmying rendition of "All That Jazz." Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) a young blond who dreams of someday being famous like Velma, watches from the audience with eyes full of envy. Later, as the cops pick up Velma for the murder of her sister, sending her fame to all-time heights as she becomes a tabloid sensation, Roxie also commits a crime of passion--shooting a lover who falsely promised to secure her cabaret debut. The girls wind up together in jail, where Mama Morton (Queen Latifah), a compassionate guard, is their only hope of redemption; and Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) is the lawyer who can get them out. There, through wonderfully familiar songs like "Razzle Dazzle," "Cell-Block Tango," and "Cellophane Man" Roxie and Velma tell their story of competing for bad-girl celebrity.
Director Rob Marshall presents a loveable CHICAGO that shares all the grit and grime of the Bob Fosse Broadway original with phenomenal performances by this grouping of Hollywood stars. The dizzying camerawork and dazzling sets make an easy transition from stage to film.
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All DVDs in this series
Chicago - Feature
This Hollywood adaptation of the classic Broadway musical sparkles with glamour and reverberates with the ener...
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Chicago - Bonus Disc
This Hollywood adaptation of the classic Broadway musical sparkles with glamour and reverberates with the ener...
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Related
Critics Reviews
Radio Times
It took more than a quarter of a century to bring the 1975 musical Chicago to the screen, but it was worth the wait to get it right. In this spirited film adaptation, Renée Zellweger stars as Roxie Hart, the ambitious newcomer who dreams of singing and dancing in one of the city's jazz clubs, and Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Velma, the established performer. After the shootings of a lover and a faithless husband, they end up in prison, where the pair find that the publicity surrounding a capital murder case can be a boon to a career in showbusiness. Director Rob Marshall licks the problem of how to film a musical that was presented as vaudeville on stage — it's closer to that style of short scenes and “turns” than to conventional musical comedy — by re-creating the musical numbers as fantasies in Roxie's head. He loses none of the energy of the stage version nor its dark subtext on the corrupting nature of stardom. Oscar-nominated Zellweger is perfect casting despite — or perhaps even because of — her inexperience in the genre, while the Oscar-winning Zeta-Jones sings and high-kicks as if born on Broadway.
Halliwell's Film Guide
A clever screenplay that treats the songs as moments of fantasy and wish fulfillment, and slick direction make for a diverting, cynical account of short-lived celebrity and the collusions between the media and its stars; it is let down by the singing and
USA Today
"...CHICAGO shows how much the element of surprise is missing from today's movies....It's part of the basic Zeta-Jones bio that she can really sing, and, wow, can she..."
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