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Give
`em the ol' razzle dazzle… razzle dazzle `em…
That
is what Miramax is hoping that Chicago will do to moviegoers
and particularly Oscar voters in the months to come.
There
is little doubt that it will charm and amuse many.
At the least, the film is a faithful recreation of
the stage experience of Chicago, the musical, albeit
on steroids. And that’s
not unpleasant.
The
frustration of Chicago is that it is not half the film
that it could have been were it made by a filmmaker and not
a theater guy. Sorry.
One hates to backhand an artist on anything so basic
as their training ground. After all, everyone starts somewhere. And maybe there is a theater director who could have made a great
movie out of this show. Rob
Marshall is not that man.
The
great irony is that Bob Fosse, one of the three minds
that really created Chicago as a musical, made Cabaret
work so well 30 years ago. He did what Rob Marshall does not do here.
He shot the musical like a movie. There was still plenty of theatricality in
the on-stage sections of the film.
But, even there, Fosse chose a style of intimacy that
was not traditionally reflected in his Broadway choreography.
There
is a page-long tract in the Chicago press notes about
how Marshall solved the “fourth wall” problem of filming Chicago
in an impromptu meeting at Miramax. One problem. His solution is not to solve the problem at all, but to make it
worse.
Before
I explain further, let me offer up the highlight of the film…
Catherine Zeta-Jones. That’s right. Renee Zellweger is out of her depth here and while she is
one of my favorite actresses, she is not a great singer or
dancer. She does not embarrass herself. But her director betrays her efforts.
Sorry…
I was busy praising CZ-J…
The
movie opens on Zeta-Jones and she kicks the movie off with
a power that nothing else in the film will ever quite match.
She can sing and dance and she is a real, old-fashioned,
red carpet movie star. Her opening number, “And All That Jazz”,
is a showstopper and it does the job here.
If I were Harvey, I would re-cut the opening to make
it even cleaner and simpler.
Let Catherine roll! Bill Condon’s excellent screenplay introduces
Rene Zellweger’s Roxie Hart character at the club,
watching Zeta-Jones’ Velma Kelly perform.
But given the way Marshall shot the sequence, which
also shows Roxie in the throws of an affair in syncopation
with Velma’s on-stage performance, it would have been much
more powerful if we met Roxie in the midst of her lust and
we were introduced afterwards.
It’s
a small distinction, but the difference between “acceptable”
and “great.” And it is not a writing issue, but an editing one. When you see how the movie is coming together,
more ambitious cutting choices expose themselves. As this version of Chicago chooses to make a Roxie somewhat
of an innocent at the start, her performing ambitions would
be all the more pathetic, her stupidity at believing a lying
male a little less obvious, and her choice to have an affair
with a pretty boy (who seemed desperately miscast) a bit more
ambiguous. The way
it is, neither Velma nor Roxie get to hold the stage quite
strongly enough. And
the truth is that the only purpose for the pre-Roxie-sex intercutting
is character establishment… character establishment that is
unnecessarily heavy handed.
Theater
plays to the back row. Film
plays to every corner of every theater with no more than a
whisper.
And
here is where Zeta-Jones, real musical theater talent and
what should have been the key to Chicago collide in
an almost haphazard way.
Zeta-Jones has two solo numbers, a duet and a group
number. The two solo numbers are the only ones in the
film that are done the way I think the whole film should have
been done. And somehow,
Zeta-Jones comes out looking better than any other performer
in the film. Coincidence?
What
is unique about the two numbers is that they are not forced
onto an unrelated proscenium arch. One is a performance set in a nightclub, so
it happens on-stage naturally.
The second number takes place in the prison and does
not throw Zeta-Jones out of her natural setting.
Marshall & Co. jazz up the prison space a little
to separate the musical from the reality, but the number really
flies. (A little more
filmic ambition would have added even more.)
Chicago is a vaudeville show. And that’s why it will likely get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture,
very much in the showbiz spirit of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But vaudeville is a theatrical style. As the Marx Brothers proved, the transition
to the screen can work beautifully.
But not by simply playing to the crowd as though you
were still on stage. Marx
Bros. movies were not audacious cinematographic efforts.
But the actors jumped off the screen.
Unfortunately,
Chicago is the Al Jolson of movie musicals.
Jolson was said to be the greatest live performer of
all time. But if you see The Jazz Singer or other
on-camera performances by Jolson, he’s good, but hardly overwhelming.
The irony is that far lesser talents made much greater
impact on celluloid.
Zellweger
and Gere and Reilly are not great singers or dancers.
But they could have been helped, had Rob Marshall
known how to or chosen to help them.
And editor Martin Walsh does help them.
He cuts away from their feet quite often.
But unable to hold the screen as theatrical performers
on their own, like Zeta-Jones, Marshall forges ahead, leaving
them to their own devices far too often. Zellweger, in particular, has two solo numbers
that require show stopping, Broadway superstar talent to pull
off on stage, much less in the colder medium of film.
In “Roxie” it takes Marshall half a song to get Zellweger
her Monroe-esque boy dancers so that all the attention is
not creating a void that she just doesn’t have the size to
fill. I’m not sure
who would have been the “right” person for this role. Can Charlize Tehron or Reese Witherspoon
sing and dance? Samantha
Morton?
Gere
has it easier. But still, he is not quite where he needs to
be. His first number
is sung in an odd U.K-ian accent that never appears again
in the film. And Marshall doesn’t sell Gere half as well as Gere tries to sell
himself. The number,
“All I Care About Is Love,” ends with a variation on the great
dance number by Christopher Walken in Pennies From
Heaven… one that Gere cannot top. Gere’s second number, “The Press Conference
Rag”, should bring down the house.
But again, its extreme staginess distances the movie
audience from the cleverness of the idea.
Finally, Gere has a number in which he tries to tap
dance his way out of a corner, literally. One problem. Gere is a game, but not very good tap dancer. Again, my brain full o’ movie history goes
right to another film, The Cotton Club, which featured
a brilliant tap juxtaposition in which Gregory Hines
“kills `em with his tap shoes.”
Chicago’s number is okay… but is okay enough?
Word has it that Hugh Jackman was approached
for the role. With
due respect to a hard-working Gere, Jackman would have floated
on air where you could see Gere’s wheels turning.
John
C. Reilly is the perfect image of a Mr. Cellophane. But as good an actor as he is, and as game
he is about singing… he’s not a showstopper.
And that role needed one.
In an homage to the great vaudevillian clowns and,
oddly, to the great fan dancers of the stage, the person playing
this role has to be transformative. Matthew Broderick was born for this
musical performance, even if Reilly was a better fit for the
drama.
The
most disappointing number belongs to Queen Latifah,
who can really belt out a song. Perfect casting. But she has to work to Marshall’s beat, not the one that really
fits her talents. She
is great, but the number doesn’t take off the way it should.
The
history of musicals is long.
But in recent years, it has tightened up quite a bit.
Moulin Rouge, 8 Women, Dancer in the Dark, Evita,
A Chorus Line, Pennies From Heaven, Everybody Says I Love
You, Jim Brooks’ aborted I’ll Do Anything, Hairspray,
The Cotton Club, New York, New York. Movies have been converted into musicals, but there are not a lot
of Broadway musicals making their way to the screen. Amazingly, none of the “recent” movie musicals were conversions
from the stage.
Nonetheless,
there are a lot of ways to make musicals work on screen.
It can be complicated, but at the heart, it is simple. Are the songs catchy? Do movie audiences like the characters? What inspires your characters to sing? Answer those three questions successfully
and you will find an audience… if not a $100 million audience,
a very grateful $50 million audience.
Audiences
are forgiving. Those
of us who are willing really want to make the leap.
We will meet you in the middle or even farther.
Of
course, while most of this review could be considered pretty
negative, there are silver linings. Catherine Zeta-Jones will win the Oscar
for Best Supporting Actress for this breathtaking performance. I get literal chills down my spine when real
movie magic strikes me. Z-J
got me repeatedly… and nothing else in Chicago did. Also, I do still think that we are looking at a Best Picture nominee.
There are better movies out there, but Chicago
is right in the Academy’s wheelhouse and too many potential
nominees have already been grounded for this one to crash
& burn.
The
thing is, I like Chicago. But I wanted to love it. And I don’t.
When
Edward Norton and Tim Roth “sang” in Everybody
Says I Love You, I loved it.
They weren’t the best singers or dancers, but they
sold it with their character work and commitment. Gere almost gets there here. But he’s playing to the back row, which creates
an expectation on which he can’t quite deliver.
When
Christopher Walken (a likely Oscar nominee this year
for Catch Me If You Can) tap danced in Pennies From
Heaven, it was a revelation. And it is still a revelation every time he dances, even though we
now know it’s coming. Renee
Zellweger gives it her best and she is good, but she is
not a revelation.
When
the French stars of 8 Women sang and danced badly, they still
were charming as hell, because Francois Ozon made the numbers
shrink to fit like fur-lined gloves. No such luck for Queen Latifah or John C. Reilly.
But
Catherine Zeta-Jones…. hers is a very special performance.
There hasn’t been a big-screen musical performance
like that since Streisand.
Now, Zeta-Jones isn’t quite Streisand yet.
But when she is working on screen, everything else
works better. In The
Jailhouse Tango, she matches up with some real dancer/singers
with theatrical experience and she still holds the screen.
If
you like musicals, you will like Chicago, as do I.
But I’m sure that I’ll be wondering just how great
it could have been for a long, long time.
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