Chicago -- 2002 -- PG-13

Movie musicals are rather few and far between when you look beyond the confines of animation which seems to require that the characters sing for some reason, and Chicago gives us a bit of a unique format for a musical setting. Rather than Rodgers & Hammerstein's classic scene-song-change format, we get musicals numbers interspersed within other scenes set like they are actually musical numbers behind the regular storyline.Fortunately, we are also given a decent reason for seeing it happen like this.

Roxie Hart is a wannabe star who is going out with a guy who promises her that he knows a guy who can make her a star. One evening, he reveals that he only told her all this to get some action out of her, and so she kills him and ends up on death row. The songs are frequent and serve to fill out the characters of those who sing them in most cases, with the exception of the notable tap dance number in the climax of the court scene which was nothing short of clever.

Roxie meets a host of colorful characters in prison while waiting for her trial including another wannabe/has been by the name of Velma Kelley, who was the big name in the news under the lawyership of Billy Flynn until Roxie came along and wisked the newspapers out from under her (until Roxie gets her dramatic irony). Velma moves from flippant to desperate as Roxie takes the whole spotlight away from her, and almost sends Roxie up the river in a final attempt to get herself off.

I see the musical numbers as the way Roxie sees the world. She is so desperate to become that big name on stage that she sees the world as a night club stage and everyone in the world players in a cabaret type show. Hence, all the musical numbers (except the deleted scene) occur "on stage" while real life goes on behind them. It's a fascinating device for a musical and only slips up in one way: a musical needs some plot songs too.

The songs primarily advance characters as they introduce themselves or react to situations; the tap dance number was the only one that advanced the plot. This means that every time a character reacted or introduced, the plot came to a grinding standstill as they sang. This is okay in the beginning, but near the end, we needed the songs to advance the plot as the character sang, and not continue with just show numbers; this is the reason I enjoyed the tap dance courtroom number so much because it advanced the plot and intergrated itself with the scene. Very cool.

This was a fun, simple little story with some nice musical numbers and some interesting characters. I can see why it did so well. Not a bad viewing at all.