I watched the first part of the movie-musical Chicago last night. After reading so many reviews of how wonderful, smart, and sexy this film was, I was ready to be pleased.
Instead, Chicago was turgid, simple, silly and dull. It was hard to project Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger onto characters that sexily sing and dance — and the music was full of adolescent Disneyesque features. I wanted to like Queen Latifah playing Mama but she seemed old and cute. The collaged scenes and the extravagent lighting was ridiculous and was better suited for the stage production. I fell asleep watching it while reading Utne (albeit, this says little good about Utne as well).
Full disclosure: I detest musicals but I thought I’d give this piece a chance.