Recently I made the mistake of listening to the soundtrack of Chicago on my computer. The songs are incredibly sticky. Hearing the songs echoing in my head for several days, I decided I wanted to rewatch the movie itself. This, of course, just reinforced the echoes in my head.
Watching the movie, I decided my favorite song, because of its sheer energy, was “Cell Block Tango,” which repeatedly insists that “he had it coming.”
Also, I remembered that, although the movie is incredibly good at what it does, I actually really don’t like the characters. See below for more on that.
According to Wikipedia, the movie is based on a 1975 stage musical, which is based on a 1926 play, which is based on some actual events in the news.
Characters in Chicago (2002)
The main character is Roxie. She goes to a vaudeville show and, admiring a star performer named Velma, imagines herself in her place. Desperately wishing to get her foot in the door in the world of entertainment, she brings home a guy who says he’ll help her, insisting to her suspicious neighbor that this man is her brother. Weeks later, she discovers he’s no help at all, and just wanted to get into her pants. Angry and humiliated, she shoots him dead. Then she convinces her doting husband to confess to the crime. The detective isn’t fooled, and she goes to jail, where she meets her idol Velma, who killed her husband and sister, who’d been having an affair. Velma snubs her.
I guess you could say Roxie is ambitious and imaginative, but she’s also incredibly whiny and entitled, thoroughly dishonest, and fantastically ungrateful towards her husband, who forgives her for the affair and raises the money for an expensive lawyer.
Velma, having been ousted from the media spotlight and seemingly abandoned by the expensive lawyer, desperately tries to team up with Roxie, but gets snubbed in turn. Velma is impressive in her vaudeville performance just before her arrest, but neither her initial arrogance towards Roxie nor her false overtures of friendship are the least bit admirable.
The expensive lawyer, Billy Flynn, is maybe the least annoying of the three, because he’s everything you’d expect a stereotypical dishonest rich successful lawyer to be. He likes pretty women, he likes money even more, and he doesn’t let the truth get in the way of his success. It’s a pleasure to see him at work; it’s a shame his client is someone I can’t bring myself to like.
Upshot
Wikipedia calls the movie a “musical black comedy crime” story. It’s a strange combination. I like the musical aspect; but the combination of black comedy and crime is what created characters I don’t like… and allowed them to succeed in their goals! In short, I find the movie entertaining, but it’s definitely not a favorite.
