Directed with premeditated reverence by theater vet Rob Marshall, the long-awaited film version of Chicago is like a shot of frosted gin that goes down cool yet glows inside — if only fleetingly. Marshall is competent enough to generously homage the vision of Chicago's originator Bob Fosse, the incomparable expressionist who understood the potential of movie musicals unlike anyone else, but at the same time, too overanxious to consider what made Fosse's work so inherently haunting and unforgettable. Marshall is a careful technician whereas Fosse was a fearless poet. Thus Marshall's Chicago represents something of an artifact from a dark and dangerous era, reconstructed with lots of zest and little depth. It's a self-incriminating spectacle that, for all the simple pleasures of pure razzle-dazzle, is a dose more cynical than it would probably prefer to believe.

The setting is 1920s in the Windy City, where murderesses Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) are shacked up in prison competing for tabloid headlines and the affections of debonair lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere). Bill Condon's peppy screenplay keeps the film rolling at a crisp pace in between its musical set pieces, and even within them, as Marshall's strategic narrative device involves cutting between reality and Roxie's musical fantasies. The decision to do this — one that fuels the film — was unavoidably problematic. Oftentimes, as with an adroit execution scene charged by morbid theatricality or Queen Latifah's voluptuous rendition of "When You're Good to Mama," the cross-cutting does shed commentary on the action, however obviously literalized. But in some cases, such as John C. Reilly's almost poignant solo tune "Mr. Cellophane," the back-and-forth chopping breaks the mood and deflates the texture.

Marshall, though, has a bigger fish to fry. Whereas Gere brings an effortless air of slippery celebrity to his tap-dancing trial king and Zeta-Jones tingles all over with juicy noir electricity, Zellweger is totally wrong for the film's most pivotal and demanding role, particularly considering that the musical element takes place inside her bubbly head. Her singing and dancing is more than adequate, but the performance requires a sexual ferocity and raw pathos that the cutesy actress simply cannot muster. (The fact that Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking were both nearly two decades Zellweger's senior when they played Roxie on Broadway is worth considering; that Fosse himself taught them their moves is worth considering even more.) Luckily, Zellweger's limpness doesn't send the movie to the gallows so much as it just suffocates its promise of greatness. A deft tribute to a recently bastardized and beaten-up art form, ultimately Chicago is both triumphant and melancholy — beneath all the good, clean fun, I couldn't help remembering that Bob Fosse is dead, and has been for quite some time.

— Joe McGovern