Razzle-Dazzle ‘Em

Ron and I finally got out to see Chicago last night. What a great movie! The writers really understood how to bring the play to the screen by keeping the vaudeville revue influence and keeping it a running commentary on the real-life events. I got so giddy watching this movie – and it has me jonesing for some musical theatre. I love Chicago because it is so unforgiving. I think that’s what I like about Kander and Ebb. The universe of the play is filled with self-interested egomaniacs with little moral turpitude. It also extends Bob Fosse’s style that everyone and everything is sexually charged and dangerous. And yes, Brigitte was right, the Cell Block Tango is some of the horniest choreography seen on film. It’s also a fun show because it’s all about dangerous women – that the dewey-eyed don’t-touch-me-there heroine of the Disney tradition is inverted and the women retain a fierce independent spirit that thinks nothing of shooting a husband, faking a pregnancy and still having time to do a song and dance – all in heels and fishnets. It is interesting to note the marketing of the movie, that it wasn’t until the movie won Golden Globes that they started to include any obvious ‘This is a musical’ shots in the previews on television. I wonder how many boyfriends went to the movies fully convined they were gonna see a prison babes movie with Catherine and Renee.