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
I've already listened to this disk twice, and the cat is looking at me strange as I thump her cat tree to the beat of the music. I plan to plug this CD into the chariot's boom box tomorrow and see how many noise abatement laws I can shatter on the way to the old 9 to 5. I hope residents of those sleepy streets I pass through like "All That Jazz", "Cell Block Tango", and "Razzle Dazzle" as much as I do.
The CD includes a couple additional tracks not found in the film. One of them, a hip-hop version of "Cell Block Tango" that I consider a travesty of the original, is my only thumbs down. However, that's why God invented a "skip" button!
