Chicago

Chicago was one of the big winners at the 2003 Oscars. It even walked off with the award for Best Picture. A European may well wonder at that, for Chicago is certainly a stunningly good-looking and entertaining film, but the best of the year? Compared with Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" and Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark" it is rather traditional, but presumably it is precisely this successful revival of Hollywood's classic musical tradition that the Americans have fallen for.

If the form is not exactly innovative - at times it is more filmed theatre than film - the theme is thoroughly topical. The film is about the pursuit of fame - at any price, and that is hardly an unfamiliar phenomenon in our media-obsessed age. The film's message, however, is drowned out by the lavish sets and the melodic, dynamic song-and-dance numbers.

The time is the Roaring Twenties, and the place is Chicago. Chorus girl Roxie Hart dreams of being as fêted as her idol, the vaudeville star Velma Kelly, but only when Roxie kills her lover does she become famous. At the same time Velma lands in prison for the double murder, out of jealousy, of her husband and her sister. The somewhat shady lawyer Billy Flynn is to defend both women. He knows exactly how best to exploit the media interest, and if it isn't there, well, then he can create it.

The film's characters are fundamentally unsympathetic. Only Roxie's husband can be relied upon, but he comes across as so hopelessly naive that you cannot possibly identify with him, so you would rather side with the scheming and ambitious Roxie.