Copycat reviewing: “Chicago”

Missjenjen’s done it.

Erin, I hear tell, in Paris’s done it.

Let’s do it - let’s review Chicago.

Though really, lame Cole Porter gags aside, what could I have to add? (Other than that, I too, had the benefit of seeing it with excellent company and had an absolute ball. As Jonathon Franzen put it, there are few ego-pleasures that beat conversation with someone who agrees with you. Next is seeing a comedy with someone with a synchronised sense of humour. When you’re the only people in the cinema audibly groaning through the trailer for “What a Girl Wants” and then the only ones giggling long after the pathetic humour of trailer for the new Steve Martin vehicle, you know the feature will be a hoot.) I suppose this site has an established rapport with musical comedy, so I should just get on with it.

Chicago. It’s glitzy, it’s glamorous, it’s great - I thoroughly endorse as a plan seeing it under Gold Class conditions or in any other manner which can involve wine and cheese. Look for it in next year’s open-air cinema program. It is so fluffy and over-the-top in its cynicism, and in both it’s seediness and glamour that one could easily tear one’s eyes away to cut cheese or refill a wine glass without losing anything much.

Zeta-Jones is rather impressive, and the only one who can really really dance. Richard Gere is charmingly seedy as the utterly mercenary criminal lawyer. Queen Latifa is just damn saucy and all woman. And Renee Zelwegger - well, yes, she could stand to gain a little weight: she kinda falls into the Kylie Minogue mould here. She knows all her shape is in her cheeks (yes, all four) and they are what she keeps pointed at the camera. Competent, wickedly pouting fun, but overshone by Zeta-Jones’ supporting role.

And, I have to say, I liked it’s cynicism. Yes, viewed cold, the idea of murderesses escaping the gallows and becoming celebrities merely because they could find an expensive lawyer’s fee is odious. But who cares? The joy of satire is seeing exaggeratedly a recognisable version of the way things are. The cattiness, the lack of honour among thieves, the way the laws of fame and publicity are seen to be just as vital (and as fickle) in the show-business of a murder trial as in a life on the stage. As one site says of the play’s origins, it is:

“Based on Maurine Watkin's newspaper reports of two actual Chicago women, Beulah May Annan and Belva Gaertner, who murdered their lovers and parlayed their crimes into fame and stardom, Chicago suggests, in its own hilariously cynical way, that a world of crooked lawyers, famous murderers, and a public who loves violence is just as frightening as the crimes themselves, and that prohibition had caused the public to lose all respect for the law to the point that the "Merry Murderesses" were only slightly outside the mainstream.”

And I did like the idea of the musical numbers being supra-real, a commentary on real events, the more glamorous, meaningful world that exists in the characters’ imaginings. Coz really, don’t we all live a little like that on a good day?