My mom likes almost every movie. She’s easily entertained, so much so I often joke she is sucked into the plight of characters in a 30 second commercial. She can list only a handful of films she has truly disliked. So, before I watched “Chicago,” which I already knew didn’t have a spotless reputation, imagine my trepidation when even she said she did not like it that much. My mother and I are in lockstep. This 2002 best picture winner is set in 1920s Chicago (duh) and follows two murderesses, Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Hart is a housewife and an aspiring Vaudeville performer who kills her lover (Dominic West) when she finds out he lied to her about having connections that could get her onstage. Kelly, on the other hand, is a big time cabaret singer who kills her sister and husband when she finds them doing “the spread-eagle” before a show. Both women vie for the services of Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), a hotshot lawyer guaranteed to “get them off.” Each of the main players, Zellweger, Zeta-Jones, Gere and John C. Riley as Hart’s husband Amos give at least a good performance. Zellweger, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work, does a fine job in the lead role. She certainly captures the naiveté and …show more content…
He does a superb job of keeping the rhythm of the movie going during the songs, cutting at all the right beats the keeps the music lively and energetic. More impressively, he cuts between the imaginary musical numbers and the real world magnificently. Most of the routines in “Chicago” occur in the imagination of Zellweger’s character, with Walsh and director Rob Marshall cross-cutting between the two. Again, Walsh cuts at the perfect time to keep the scene full of vigor. He also never waits too long to bring audiences back to the real world during the musical numbers, which helps remind them this is mostly