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‘Old musical’ gets rave reviews from box office

***** of 5


It’s full of “all that jazz.”

Chicago, the movie based on the hit Broadway play, has already received several awards for its risky, tango-filled music and dancing. Come Sunday night at the Academy Awards, they should be able to add a few more to their pile.

Chicago tells the story of Roxie Hart (played with the sweet innocence of Renee Zellwegger) and Velma Kelly (played with ultimate bitchiness in Catherine Zeta-Jones), two murderesses in Chicago.

Kelly, a famous dancer who has an act with her sister, comes home to find said sister and her own husband in “the spread eagle.” Kelly murders them in a jealous rage and is sent to prison.

Hart idolizes Velma and wishes to leave her devoted but boring husband Amos (a heartbreaking performance by John C. Reilly) to dance on the stage. She has an affair with a furniture salesman (Dominic West) who promises to make her a star.

Once it is his true nature is revealed he was using her, Roxie takes a gun to him. When her husband fails to take the blame for her crime after discovering the infidelity, she is also sent to the jail where Kelly resides.

Hart attempts to make nice with the media-starved Kelly, but finds that the only thing she's interested in is the press. Soon Hart discovers that she may actually hang and decides to seek the help of Matron “Mama” Morton (Queen Latifah in her best role yet) who hooks her up with crooked lawyer Billy Flynn (handsome and debonairly portrayed by Richard Gere).

Flynn uses his public relations skills to the max and paints the picture of an innocent girl who fell into a bad crowd. The media goes crazy for this and Kelly is left out in the cold.

Throughout the movie, there is tantalizing dancing and singing, which continues on to the very end. Will the two women go free? Or will they hang for their crimes?

Flynn said it best - “They’d love you a lot more if you were hanged! You know why? Because it would sell more papers...That's Chicago!”

This movie is rated PG-13 for sexual content and dialogue, violence and thematic elements.