This is a long way from the warm-hearted MGM musicals of the 1940s and 50s. They were already finished, subject to pattern exhaustion, by the end of the 1950s. And after a hiatus of ten or so years, musicals were revived as a set of edgier comments on contemporary life -- with "West Side Story" and "Cabaret." By the time of Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz," they were as energetic as ever but mighty dark in tone.

This was taken from the Broadway play and directed by award-winning choreographer Rob Marshall, who learned a lot from Bob Fosse's work. Even the tricky use of hats appears in the last number, though the hats aren't derbies.

Marshall shows a lot of skill in handling his performers. Hollywood is compelled to thrust name stars into musical roles even if they have next to no musical training. Of the three principals here, Catherine Zeta-Jones had some dancing and singing roles early in her career but had since become an ordinary actress of some talent. Neither Renee Zellweger nor Richard Gere have had dance training -- and dancing is difficult. (Anybody can sing. You can sing. I can sing. We all can sing.) Rob Marshall masks the paucity of their experience using several techniques. When possible he surrounds them with twirling bodies of more accomplished dancers. He keeps most of the takes short, so that if a step is flubbed it doesn't much matter. And he keeps the steps themselves easy and sometimes brazenly tricky, like Michael Jackson's "moonwalk." There may be nothing much to the dances -- no grand jetes or any demanding stuff like that -- but they're flashy and impressive. Fosse was able to choreograph some neat minimalist steps with non professionals like Janet Leigh in "My Sister Eileen." Only one of the featured players has had formal dance training, having danced with the Kirov Ballet and worked as a soloist with the American Ballet Theater before becoming a teacher in Canada. She's hardly on screen. I won't even bother to identify her because you can pick her out at once.

Not to knock the three or four stars. At the very least, the two ladies are sinuous and sexy and, like Gere, they give it everything they have. I still can't help wishing they'd had one or two polished performers like Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse.

For the most part the numbers are staged as if they were being performed on a platform with one or two single bright lights illuminating the performers, similar to the hospital hallucination in "All That Jazz." The music is bumpy and rhythmic and evokes Chicago jazz of the 1920s. None of the numbers is likely to enter The Great American Songbook but the lyrics by Fred Ebb, however, are cutting and sometimes very amusing. And some of the dialog sparkles with irony. "So I got a shotgun and fired two warning shots -- into his head." The plot doesn't matter too much. Gere is a high-end criminal lawyer who saves Zellweger from the noose by means that are cheerfully illegal and unethical. Zeta-Jones cooperates in getting Zellweger off and they form a successful two-act. Everybody is happy. Everybody who counts, anyway. Nothing is more satisfying that watching Gere belt out his first number, "All I Care About Is Love." It's like the gathering of the mobsters and their goons in "Some Like It Hot" -- and the organization is called "Friends of Italian Opera." The hypocrisy stuns.

"Chicago" is the first film in eleven or ten years thoroughly determined to be a full-blooded musical (the previous one was "Beauty and the Beast", or just possibly "Aladdin"), and, if there have been others, is almost certainly the best. Forget "Moulin Rouge". That film was terrified by the very idea of being a musical. It couldn't introduce a song without being seen to quote it rather than sing it, and would cut the song short, relieved to have it over and done with, at the soonest possible moment. But "Chicago" REALLY launches into its production numbers. Its songs are full-throated and lusty. (As far as the music goes, and the wit and sparkle of the lyrics, Kander and Ebb wrote far better songs for "Chicago" than for "Cabaret".) They've been staged with dazzling style.

Yes, a pity about the editing. But whereas the rapid-fire editing of "Moulin Rouge" as good as put a bullet through that film's heart, the rapid-fire - and it's not really "rapid-fire", it's just that there's too much of it - editing of "Chicago" does only minimal harm. Don't get me wrong: it's unquestionably a bad thing. The sudden shifts, bang on the downbeat, from the subtler colour schemes of the everyday Chicago to the block reds and misty blues of the stage Chicago, don't have nearly the impact they'd have if they weren't occurring every other minute; and Marshall's stark and striking shots are never held long enough to get the most out of them. A good thing the next image is never a disgrace on the previous one. A good thing that every other aspect of the production is so rock-solid to begin with.

It's absurd that Martin Walsh won an Oscar for such overdone to-ing an fro-ing. Some critics (Roger Ebert is one) suggest that the award was justfied on the grounds that Walsh's editing skillfully hides the defects of inferior performers, but I don't buy this. I'm convinced, for instance, that Catherine Zeta-Jones is NOT an inferior performer, that she doesn't NEED patchwork-quilt editing in order to look good; if she does, then Walsh has indeed performed a miracle, but not one he should be congratulated for in polite society. As for Richard Gere, I again don't see the need for him to appear to be better than he is. There's nothing wrong with his voice and he doesn't have to dance much HIMSELF. He's the kind who gets other people to dance for him. In the song "Razzle Dazzle 'Em" he actually sings as much: "As long as you keep 'em way off balance, How can they spot you got no talents?" Billy Flynn OUGHT to be a mediocre song-and-dance artist, who relies on glitter, lights and inspired staging - but certainly NOT on deceptive editing. In that song we need to see what's going on. We also need the suggestion that Flynn fools people who on some level willingly allow themselves to be fooled. In fact, we do see all this anyway, which is why the overly frenetic editing fails to do any real damage.

The story of "Chicago" is at once deeply moral and deliciously amoral. The two go together. Amorality depends for its zest on our sense of the pull of true morality: our sense that our heroes and heroines really do do the wrong thing now and then, and that no false excuses are being made on their behalf.

I just watched this movie and I gotta say, it's both good and okay at the same time. The okay part is the plot of this movie. It's kinda hard to follow, I actually recall looking at my phone at some points and as a movie lover that's not a good sign. Another downside to this movie is the characters. These characters are not very likeable. Some characters try to make you feel sympathetic for them but backfire on their attempts later on in the movie. Some characters are just despicable the whole movie through. And for some characters I can't even tell whose side they're on. I think the only characters I sorta felt sorry for was the husband and the woman who got hanged. At least I believe she didn't mean to do whatever she did to get this punishment. But there is one positive thing to this movie and that's the musical numbers. These are the highlights of the movie and I paid attention to every single song. The music is well orchestrated, the choreography is wonderful and often times pretty impressive for what they did, the aesthetics and scenery is creative and unique, the songs overall are catchy and gave me some golden age musical vibes that I appreciate, and the actors really do their best to sing these songs and they sound fantastic. But unfortunately the plot just seems to interrupt the fantastic parts and just gives us more complicated story and unlikeable characters which I got tired of quickly.

Long story short, this is an okay movie with a great musical hidden in-between the plot and characters.