Columnist Geoff Carter: ‘Chicago’ enjoyable, but lives in shadow of ‘Moulin’

Geoff Carter

Friday, Aug. 22, 2003 | 8:34 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

When "Moulin Rouge" was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award a couple of years ago, I hoped against hope it would win, even though I knew it would be soundly trounced by Peter Jackson's gorgeous epic, "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."

"Fellowship" was the best-reviewed movie of the year, whereas the critical opinion of "Moulin Rouge" was polarized, and its box office on the low side.

Naturally, both films lost to Ron Howard's by-the-numbers tearjerker, "A Beautiful Mind," and I had to ask myself why I cared -- why I'd invested so much in Baz Luhrmann's colorful, manic jukebox.

True, the film was audacious (yet rooted in tradition -- even Debbie Reynolds loved it), but it was almost too clever for its own good. I wondered if I loved its characters, or even really knew them.

One year later came "Chicago," now available on DVD (Miramax Home Entertainment, $29.99), a musical the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did find to be worthy of the Best Picture award.

I'm less sure of that, but "Chicago" did crystallize my thinking about "Moulin Rouge" in one respect: The characters in "Chicago" are so vastly unsympathetic that they make the principals of "Moulin Rouge" look wholly human by comparison.

On the stage, "Chicago's" coldness hardly mattered. It's a smart, sexy show, packed with great songs, Bob Fosse's jaw-dropping choreography and dialogue as precise as a whipcrack. All these elements made it to Rob Marshall's film, along with a new song by John Kander and Fred Ebb, a Bill Condon polish to the script and a veritable army of A-List stars.

So why do I feel like something was lost in translation? It could be that I was spoiled by the show when I saw it performed at Mandalay Bay, even though the roles weren't filled by stars as compelling as Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah and John C. Reilly.

It could be that I was less taken with Richard Gere than others were -- true, he did a fine job as Billy Flynn, but let's not give the man too much credit for doing an entire movie without squinting.

While watching the film on DVD a second time, I could start to see where some of my dissatisfaction was rooted. Marshall cuts too quickly and too often; many of the dance routines feel like action-movie fights, save those by Zeta-Jones, the only accomplished dancer among the stars. Marshall gave her free rein, and she more than deserves the Oscar she won for her supporting role.

Renee Zellweger acquits herself well, but she's completely overshadowed by the personalities around her -- and while that's the point of the story, it does make it kind of hard to give yourself to the film when you don't really care what happens to its main character.

The biggest pleasures of "Chicago" come from watching actors do things that we didn't think actors knew how to do anymore, and that shouldn't be the point of a musical.

Despite my qualms, I can recommend "Chicago" fully, and even encourage you to buy the DVD instead of renting it. It includes a routine cut from the film ("Class") and a documentary in which the principals mostly congratulate each other, but above and beyond all that, "Chicago" looks and sounds terrific.

"Chicago" is a deserving film, even if it had to climb atop the shoulders of "Moulin Rouge" to achieve those giddy heights. It's somewhat sad that Luhrmann's film won't get an equal share of the glory, but that's really up to us to decide.

Time will put these two films in their place, and 10 years from now I'll be curious to see which pulls top billing on the marquee.