Amazon.co.uk Review
Catherine Zeta Jones actually started her career on the British boards (she was in The Pajama Game and 42nd Street) so her turn as slinky Velma Kelly isn't that surprising; Renée Zellweger as Roxie Hart is more of a leftfield choice but she shows she can handle the singing demands with pizzazz. The real revelation may well be rapper Queen Latifah, who belts out "When You're Good to Mama" with a marvelous affinity for the material.
Okay, so the R&B reprise of "Cell Block Tango/He Had It Coming" by Queen Latifah, Macy Gray, and Lil' Kim fails to convince, while Anastacia's "Love is a Crime" is just bland (rest easy, purists, it's over the end credits). On the other hand, the CD provides two bonuses: "Class," which was cut from the movie, and "I Move On," a great duet written by Kander and Ebb for the final cut. It's really easy to mess up film adaptations of Broadway shows: happily, Chicago proves it can be done right. --Elisabeth Vincentelli
Review
And much of John Kander and Fred Ebb's score is so strong that it stands up even without pictures. "And All That Jazz" and "Razzle Dazzle" are great songs, witty showbiz standards. Set pieces like "Cell Block Tango", are delivered with so much oomph that they remain compelling.
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger as the two leading bad girls get all the best material, throws themselves into it and are pretty entertaining. And rap star Queen Latifah excels as Mama Moreton in her showcase "When You're Good To Mama". Her rap version of "Cell Block Tango" with Lil Kim and Macy Gray is not bad either.
But Richard Gere as shyster lawyer Billy Flynn seems merely irritating rather than genuinely vile and doesn't have much of a vocal presence. And the less said about the obligatory pop song tacked on the end of the album, a useless effort by Anastasia called "Love Is A Crime" (ugh!), the better.
Soundtrack albums are by their nature incomplete. If you love the film so much you must have a souvenir this will do. But the real problem is that 'Chicago' itself is so relentlessly bleak that it can get a bit samey and one note. Without the razzle dazzle of hot babes to punch it home, it needs better performances and a deeper, more interesting interpretation than this to produce a really satisfying album. --Nick Reynolds
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