RENEE ZELLWEGER'S BACK: No, I'm not lauding the new movie Chicago for resurrecting her career - - she's doing quite fine. But, my lord, if that movie had more shots of her unclothed back . . . you see her back in that movie about as often as you saw Elizabeth Berkeley's breasts in Showgirls, and that's saying something.
Let me dissent from all the raves that the movie is receiving, because, honestly, the movie left me more than a bit cold. The movie promotes messages that are as worn out as my t-shirt from the 1992 NCAA Men's Basketball East Regional (Duke, Kentucky, Seton Hall, UMass, and you know how that ended up) -- Fame Is Fleeting, Criminals Are Celebrities, Catherine Zeta-Jones Has A Large Booty, etc. There's just no there there; it's all style and surface.
That said, the style and surface have their moments. Director Rob Marshall has come up with a comprehensive cinematic language to integrate the songs with the rest of the scenes -- people don't just randomly burst into song; it's all in their heads, but it works. It does. And, yeah, Latifah's great and all, but I can't say I was wowed by the performances.
Not, as I kept thinking to myself, like I was with Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann's inventive, exciting, sumptuous, ecstatic, original movie musical from last year. Seriously: that was a movie. It was something you could lose yourself in, attach to emotionally, be surprised by, even thrilled by.
But Chicago? I can't think of one scene that I'd want to see again -- even the ones like Richard Gere's puppetry scene that I enjoyed. It passed through me like chicken croquettes from a diner -- yeah, sure, it was fine while it lasted, and it was a meal, but a lot of it was the gravy covering up the quality of the chicken itself, and I'd never go out of your way to have them again.
See Drumline already, okay? What do you mean you haven't yet?
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