Plain gal who wants to be a star - Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) - shoots her lyin cheatin lover and is sent to gaol to be hanged. While in prison, she meets her wanna-be Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), also caught murdering her man.

Our hero, Roxie, is to be hanged by the neck until she can sing no more. Unless. Unless, no, it seems impossible. If only Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), the best lawyer $5000 can buy, can get her off...

"A triumph of no nonsense musicalness. My toes tapped throughout."

"A truly wonderful movie, but whenever I see Catherine Zeta in this movie all I can think of is her performing it, pregnant, at the Oscars. I wince whenever I see her do any back bends."

"Made me want to light up a cigarette."

"Nobody can wear a 1920's floppy cap better than Richard Gere."

"Richard Gere is maturing like a fine wine."

Billy Flynn manages to manipulate the media to such an extent that Roxie gets off and is freed, along with Velma.

Velma and Roxie team up and star together in a musically guaranteed weepy ending.

This movie is a stunning masterpiece of complex camera workage. Of deft inter cutting betwixt reality and musical tap dancing dreamery.

Oh! What a wonderful world! This is a world of our dreams on the big screen. Of highly colored backdrops with athletic dancy back-flippage and hairstyles of such exactness the strongest industrial grade hair conditioners were employed, no doubt.

That Richard Gere can both dance and sing (is that really his voice?, are those really his tap dancing toes?) is a moment of eurekaness we have been waiting for since that seminal moment of shirt offedness in Officer and a Gentleman. Our Richard shines, and, for me, was the highlight of this movie.

Catherine Zeta Jones is also inspirational. Renée Zelweiger excels in her 'every plain woman on the big screen' kinda way. A really good movie, don't miss it, a nice satire on the media and women on men violence.

"You are a disloyal husband."

"Some guys just can't hold their arsenic."

A wonderful movie, perhaps still too young to be appreciated as a classic, but, over time, could well be. The performances are all superb, the music excellent, the dance sequences rarely bettered.

Fully deserving of the adulation heaped on it on its release.

August 17 , 2003