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Chicago (2002)
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Movie Review by BillyBob
November 3rd, 2009
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10 REASONS WHY I HATED CHICAGO
Complain - Complain - Complain.
I loathe a phony, little 'Period-Flick' such as the likes of CHICAGO.
OK - For starters, what bugged me, big time, about this flick was this -
It was so frickin' obvious that the producers of this flick, painstakingly, invested an incredible amount of time, effort, and expense on every detail of CHICAGO to firmly establish, in the viewer's mind, a particular era of time. In CHICAGO's case, this era was set at the height of the Jazz Age, circa 1924 - OK - That part's fine and dandy with me. I have nothing against the Jazz Age, per se.
But, after all this frickin' time and effort was made to confirm (and convince the viewer) that the year was, indeed, 1924, then the producers inexplicably offered up elaborately staged Musical Numbers (for all of us to marvel at) that weren't anywhere near to what one would have seen back at that period of time, at all. It's true. Take my word for it on this one. I have a couple of really ancient relatives still kicking around (with all of their marbles still intact) and they can quite easily vouch for me on this claim.
I found it really annoying - All this ridiculous, preposterous attempt at visually demonstrating period-authenticity, and, then when it came down to the whole point of this flick (the musical numbers), and there was absolutely no period-authenticity to them, at all. I think that was totally dumb.
My guess is that the producers of CHICAGO figured no one would really care, one way, or the other, anyways. But they were dead wrong. 'Cause I sure did care. Yeah. I want to be able to enjoy a film that's set in 1924 and expect it to remain faithful to that period of time from start to finish. 'Cause, the way I see it, if it's not a Sci-Fi flick, then time-frame consistency is a vitally important factor to me. No flip-flopping about allowed. Thank you, very much!
In my opinion - The 'time-warp' nonsense that was offered up in CHICAGO would be about the same as if the cast in AMADEUS were to all suddenly get up whenever Mozart started tinkling away on the ivories, and instead of doing the Minuet, they'd start Break-Dancing, or whatever. And, yeah, I know that's kind of an extreme example to make, but it gets my point across, quite effectively, don't you think?
I found that when it came to these particular Musical Numbers staged in CHICAGO, I didn't really enjoy any of them very much, at all. OK. The first number was pretty impressive, alright, but, then with each subsequent number that followed, it seemed to me that there was this deliberate attempt to out-do the one that just took place before it. So, for me, it all became this really tedious battle of elaborately staged Musical Numbers. And after a while I got thoroughly sick of the whole blasted thing, all together. I really did.
And if all the above mentioned stuff didn't add insult to injury -
I ask you - Why-Oh-Why? - Did the Casting Agent who was responsible for CHICAGO's Actor line-up have to go and recruit (as one of CHICAGO's main characters) one of the biggest, no-talent, slime-bucket, Hollywood jerks of all time? Eh!? Why? I'm, of course, talking here about that mincing, little, gerbil-fisting, fairy-princess - RICHARD GERE. Oooh! - YUCK!! - When GERE went into his utterly retarded, little, 'Soft-Shoe' Number, I thought for sure that I was going to totally puke my guts out all over the frickin' TV screen. I really did!
I just don't get it - A lot of people raved, and raved, and raved (ad nauseum) to me about how great this flick was until they were literally blue in the face about it. But I personally thought that it was a major let-down, in more ways than one. It really was.
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