Chicago is a Broadway musical set in a female jail where the inmates like to sing about their crimes (a pretty strange synopsis I know, but hear me out with this one). Since the musical's Broadway debut, many movie adaptations have been made. Today I will be reviewing the 2002 film starring Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

I've known about Chicago for a long time. It was one of those classics that every musical theatre performer knows about and has seen. However, up until now, I hadn't seen the movie or the musical. I knew quite a lot of the songs and had seen some of them at dance concerts but it was never really a show or movie that I was interested in. It seemed unnecessarily dark and sexual so wasn't looking forward to watching it.

But what do I think now that I've seen it?

I was really surprised at how good this movie was. Throughout the whole movie from the opening scene I kept thinking "Wow, this is actually really good." I love it when my pre-perceived thoughts of a movie are proven wrong.

One of my favourite parts of this movie and one of the parts I think was done the best were the parallels. This movie centres around two Chicago nightclub showgirls who are thrown into jail for murder. As this story was originally a stage musical, their time in jail was integrated with classic Broadway song and dance numbers. Their experiences are all told through cliche Broadway songs whilst the publicity surrounding a female murder trial is paralleled with the publicity surrounding a media star. These were all very clever parallels as key moments in the movie were told through funny stage acts. For example, a press conference from the defendant and her lawyer was told through a ventriloquist act with the defendant as the dummy.

The other amazing part about this movie is how well it translated from stage to screen. So many movie-musicals these days hardly feel like musicals at all but instead movies with a bit of singing and dancing. This felt like a true musical and it was clear that the filmmakers had done their research. It felt like true musical performers were used in the making of the movie. This included the actors who all felt like more than just actors but triple threats. The filmmakers seemed to pull the best from both worlds; they were able to perfectly blend the elements of a movie and a live musical. The movie had great directing, great lighting, great camera-work, great dancing; everything that you'd expect from a great musical and a great movie. 

Being set mostly set in a Chicago jazz club, all of the music in this movie was jazz. This felt so appropriate and being a drummer, I loved seeing this. Additionally, this movie didn't incorporate any of what I like to call movie-musical nonsense. Movie-musicals tend to implement electronic elements (particularly electronic programmed drum parts) and use way too much auto-tune to make the songs feel like pop songs. This is something I hate to see in movie-musicals. A live musical never has access to these sorts of cheats so why should a movie-musical? A perfect example of this is 13: The Musical which was recently released as a Netflix film. All you need to do is listen to the first song of the Original Broadway Cast Recording and then listen to the first song on the Netflix album; you'll immediately see what I mean. Luckily, the music of Chicago stayed true to its source material by using only acoustic instruments and avoiding auto-tune altogether as far as I could hear.

Chicago is a movie for, let's say, mature audiences. There are many, once again, mature elements and scenes in the movie. I would avoid showing this movie to anyone under the age of fifteen. This movie is probably still not appropriate for people over that recommended age. And even then, not everyone is going to enjoy this movie. With no likeable characters, dark themes and *jazz*, it is not an enjoyable uplifting movie which is the kind a lot of people prefer. In fact, I often prefer these types of movies (you can hear me talk more about that in my recent review of Ticket to Paradise). Chicago is more of what I would call a piece of art; something that can be compared to The Dark Knight. 

Chicago is one of the better movie-musicals I've seen. With amazing dancing, actors who look like they know what they're doing and clever integration of the classic Broadway elements, it has everything you'd want to see in a fantastic musical plus everything you'd want to see in a fantastic movie. Not everyone is going to like Chicago but I certainly see why a fair few do.

Director: Rob Marshall

Starring: Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere

Year released: 2002

My rating: 8/10

Review by Tristan Carr

Last edited: 05/02/2023