Chicago, baby!
Jan. 12th, 2003 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockAlright folks! I just Chicago.
I loved it. Four stars! ****!
This was a great musical. Wonderfully entertaining, with absolutely fantastic song & dance numbers. And the cast was awesome; full of great actors who do play their roles wonderfully: Renee Zelleweger, Richard Gere, Katherine Zeta-Jones, John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah. Even the smaller parts were wonderfully casted-- The ever-gorgeous Taye Diggs was an M. C. and a pianist, Mya (the hip hop singer) was a dancer/singer (loved her solo part!), and there was nothing funnier than watching Lucy Liu (sp?) being dragged into jail for murder while kicking reporters in the shins and throwing a tantrum.
This movie is about this woman (Renee Zelleweger) who wants to be a broadway performer in the 1920s. She kills a man in a crime of passion and gets sent to jail, where she gets the big town's most sensationalistic lawyer (Richard Gere, who does this amazing tap-dance sequence) to represent her so she doesn't get hanged. It's true that it's hard to find anyone actually likable in this film, but the character's antics are so outrageous you can't help but love watching.
I was hard picked, all the way through, to decide on my favorite song/dance. KZJ almost rivals Liza Minelli in her opening of "All that Jazz"-- a piece of the movie's narrative which was extremely well edited & cut-- and all of Richard Gere's part were great fun, and very clever. Queen Latifa looked gorgeous in her gold flapper costume for her song, and Renee Zelleweger absolutely shined as the movie's main performance, doing the best songs and looking great (though very very skinny-- she must have had to work her ass of to extreme levels to look and perform this part). John C. Reilly (the main character's clueless husband)'s lament about being invisible was sad and yet charmingly done-- the guy has a great voice, and this is the first time I've heard him sing in a movie before. Still, I think my favorite song was when all the women on the jail's murder row (KZJ included) sang a many-parted number about how they killed their men-- "But they really had it coming!"
I found myself at various points wanting to compare this to Moulin Rouge, but I found that to like comparing apples an oranges, as they say. Both fruti, and both musicals, but wildly different. MR was more... spectacular, more wild and original and bizarre. This movie was closer to the traditional style of musicals, and yet was just as phenominally done. I wouldn't be surprised if it was up for a lot of rewards.
I loved it. Four stars! ****!
This was a great musical. Wonderfully entertaining, with absolutely fantastic song & dance numbers. And the cast was awesome; full of great actors who do play their roles wonderfully: Renee Zelleweger, Richard Gere, Katherine Zeta-Jones, John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah. Even the smaller parts were wonderfully casted-- The ever-gorgeous Taye Diggs was an M. C. and a pianist, Mya (the hip hop singer) was a dancer/singer (loved her solo part!), and there was nothing funnier than watching Lucy Liu (sp?) being dragged into jail for murder while kicking reporters in the shins and throwing a tantrum.
This movie is about this woman (Renee Zelleweger) who wants to be a broadway performer in the 1920s. She kills a man in a crime of passion and gets sent to jail, where she gets the big town's most sensationalistic lawyer (Richard Gere, who does this amazing tap-dance sequence) to represent her so she doesn't get hanged. It's true that it's hard to find anyone actually likable in this film, but the character's antics are so outrageous you can't help but love watching.
I was hard picked, all the way through, to decide on my favorite song/dance. KZJ almost rivals Liza Minelli in her opening of "All that Jazz"-- a piece of the movie's narrative which was extremely well edited & cut-- and all of Richard Gere's part were great fun, and very clever. Queen Latifa looked gorgeous in her gold flapper costume for her song, and Renee Zelleweger absolutely shined as the movie's main performance, doing the best songs and looking great (though very very skinny-- she must have had to work her ass of to extreme levels to look and perform this part). John C. Reilly (the main character's clueless husband)'s lament about being invisible was sad and yet charmingly done-- the guy has a great voice, and this is the first time I've heard him sing in a movie before. Still, I think my favorite song was when all the women on the jail's murder row (KZJ included) sang a many-parted number about how they killed their men-- "But they really had it coming!"
I found myself at various points wanting to compare this to Moulin Rouge, but I found that to like comparing apples an oranges, as they say. Both fruti, and both musicals, but wildly different. MR was more... spectacular, more wild and original and bizarre. This movie was closer to the traditional style of musicals, and yet was just as phenominally done. I wouldn't be surprised if it was up for a lot of rewards.
