Chicago: A

They say there is no business like showbusiness. What with the excessive sex, lying, boozing, cheating, and all around sinning of Hollywood's general populace "they" are probably right. They've probably also seen "Chicago", the movie adapted from Bob Fosse's 1975 Broadway smash about women and their carnal desires: to kill, to drink, to lust, to sing, and to dance.

Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) was a 20's nobody, a child of the Jazz Age who was desperate to break in. She was a nobody who idolized the Vaudevile vixen Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and who, after Velma is arrested for whacking her husband, goes off and emulates her idol to the tee: she kill's her lover too. When Roxie is sent of to the big house she meets a host of other angry women, women who have absolutely no reason to kill anyone but who are so intoxicated by the mere thought of being free they can't help themselves. Blame it on the evils of liquor and jazz, the media does. Soon Roxie is involved with all manner of rogues: the prison warden "Mama" (Queen Latifah in a delicious and fiery performance), the charlatan lawyer Billy Flint (Richard Gere) who is gonna set her free, and Velma herself.

Two elements elevate this movie to perfection: the sardonic, hilariously loving glance at celebrity that drips through the screen in every take and the flawless song-and-dance numbers that seem to happen in Roxie's mind (she's obsessed with the spotlight) and all around her simultaneously...all while Taye Diggs narrates of course. What comes off as hokey on the page turns into electric zam! on screen thanks in large part to theater stalwart Rob Marshall who choreographed and directed the film.

With performances that are wonderful, hilarious, and vibrantly alive the cast soars miles above any other theater-adaption in years. To these girls the greatest pleasure is getting away with it all, the "old razzle dazzle" as the movie puts it. They've turned celebrity into virtue, becoming tabloid saints crucified by the destructive evils of Chicago and never by their own bad decisions. The movie knows this and whips all of it - lying, cheating, sex, drugs, love, and lust - into flawless cabaret.