Gaga critics (and some of my esteemed mouthshut peers) have proclaimed that Rob Marshall has ’’reinvented the musical’’ with his filmed version of Chicago, in his directorial debut no less. So have Oscar judges evidently (not that that counts for much!) And that’s true, if turning the musical into a nauseating mess counts as ’’reinventing’’ it.
Marshall is so far out of his element here that it’s absolutely laughable. Marshall obviously saw the (relatively) masterful Moulin Rouge and said, ’’Hey, I can make one of those!’’ then took his beloved play and tried to film it. This alone is bad enough, but any semblance of entertainment value got thrown out when Marshall and his goons got loose in the editing room. Like a child with a new toy, Marshall chopped anything good in Chicago all to hell. One need look no further than the final musical number, wherein starlets Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger prance around, presumably showing off their biggest and baddest moves -- after all, it’s the last number of the show. But no, Marshall can’t let the dance moves speak for themselves. He has to punctuate each beat with a new cut, jumping from long shot to close-up and back again. It’s a TV commercial, only louder and with less of a point, because you’ve already paid your money. Sorry Rob, it takes a lot more than super-fast cutting to make a masterpiece. I left with a headache.
The result? I have no idea if Zellweger and Zeta-Jones are good dancers, because you never see them dance. You think you do, but what you actually see is a bunch of 1/8th-second clips of them dancing, strung together from countless takes, rapid-fire. (The fact that the entire film is under-lit and often out of focus is beside the point.) It’s a blur of motion that hides any flaws their might be under a veil of insane action.
Too bad it’s not a Van Damme movie.
Speaking of Van Damme, he might have been a better choice for Richard Gere’s part. Gere can’t sing and he can barely dance. His presence is baffling, as he tries terribly hard but looks like he ought to be using a walker. Oh, and have someone dub his singing. I hear Jean-Claude is available.