Rob Marshall’s film version of the jazz-age musical Chicago takes us right back to an era of high-living, nightclubs, sexual decadence, teetering on the abyss of financial ruin — the 1970s. The original show, with book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, premiered on Broadway in 1975 — three years after the release of Bob Fosse’s barnstorming movie Cabaret. In fact, the whole style of this movie, its staging, its photography and choreography, looks very much as if nothing much has changed in the intervening 30 years. This didn’t stop the film from winning six Oscars, including best picture.But it isn’t exactly Cabaret the film resembles. What this looks like is a sort of grown-up version of Bugsy Malone, that very entertaining but strangely knowing 1976 kiddie-musical by Alan Parker. The same tone of naughty-but-nice criminality and low-cal raunchiness prevails throughout Chicago, suitable for the coach parties and weekend-breakers flocking to the current London West End stage revival. Putting their best hoofin’ feet forward are Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones (who won a best actress in a supporting role Oscar for her performance) and Richard Gere. Zellweger plays Roxie Hart, the hard-working gal who dreams of showbiz glory. A no-good low-life uses her sexually and tries to dump her, so she fills him full of lead. Pending trial, Roxie winds up in the women’s prison, meeting über-vamp Velma Kelly, a nightclub chanteuse who has just handed her sister a one-way ticket to Violentdeathville for fooling around with her husband. Zeta-Jones impersonates her in a Louise Brooks bob, looking sleek and sexy and about 2,4m tall. Finally there is the pewter-haired, crinkle-eyed heartbreaker himself: Gere, filling his chalk-striped, double-breasted suit and snap-brimmed fedora as if to the manner born. He plays Billy Flynn, an appallingly venal criminal lawyer who specialises in this kind of case, adept not merely at manipulating juries but credulous newspapermen as well, spinning them sensational tales to create the publicity and marketing deals that are going to pay his monster fee. He’s Clarence Darrow and Max Clifford rolled into one. Chicago is a very difficult show to open out cinematically, for the simple reason that it’s almost entirely set in a prison — imprisoned there, in fact. And Marshall often elects simply not to open it out. For great swathes of time, it looks like a very expensively filmed record of the theatre production on a giant sound stage, rather than a living, breathing film on its own account. The sleazy dance numbers sometimes happen on a fantasy level: inside Roxie’s or Velma’s head. The wild abandon of the chorus line will be debunked by their sudden absence as one of the leading ladies leans across an ordinary, smoky room to insinuate something. It’s all just pretend. Which is stretching things a bit, considering that the musical convention of bursting into song is pretend in the first place. But what glorious songs! Razzle-Dazzle, All That Jazz — these are showtunes with nuclear warheads. Chicago doesn’t have the visual flair and invention of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, but what it does have are these showstopping musical numbers, properly embedded in the fabric of the show itself. They’re not, as in Luhrmann, a miscellaneous bunch of old pop tunes, but wonderful original classics. I laugh out loud every time I hear the cheeky lines from Razzle-Dazzle: ”Give them an act with lots of flash in it/And the reaction will be passionate.” That’s a rhyme Byron would have been proud to write. John C Reilly plays Amos, Roxie’s poor, deluded schmuck of a husband and with his hangdog, victim face, he’s ideal casting. Marshall throws away some of his song Mr Cellophane; he isn’t allowed to get to the end of it uninterrupted so that we get the full pathetic effect of him whimpering: ”Thanks for listening.” Great song, though. These are unstoppable numbers; not enough on their own, however, to get a film into orbit. And after seeing the principals strut their stuff, striking choreographed poses with one knee bent and hat tipped with devilish sexiness over one eye, you begin to suspect a whiff of naff. Or if not that, then sameness: familiar-looking shots of supposedly louche nightclubs with a single spotlight in which the dust motes are circling, the camera doing an adoring and celebratory swirl around the leading lady as she belts out the final note — and it’s all sugar-coated with ersatz glam-sleaze and unthreatening toughness. It isn’t that anyone’s neglecting to give one 101% or that there isn’t loads of fun to be had in the set pieces. Gere has a terrific moment when he tapdances his way out of a tight spot in court, and into the jury’s affections. But that works because the action is happening outside the prison; it has removed to another location in the blink of an eye. In short, where it starts to look like a film. I left feeling that this had been unambitious and a bit of a missed opportunity. But Chicago is a very good bet for those who don’t have the leisure to make it to London for the stage show, and want a reliable, cheaper ticket-price approximation with (mostly) proper Americans in the cast. — Â