Chicago (film)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Billy: My client never kept a diary!
Roxie: Yeah! And she Broke the lock!.

  • Ear Worm: Lots. Cell Block Tango comes to mind.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: The legal system is a farce and a circus, and fame will let you get away with anything. Additionally, if you are falsely accused of murder, you're more likely to get executed than someone who did.
  • Hype Backlash: Soon after it won big at the Oscars (it beat The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Gangs of New York for Best Picture), this set in.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Billy Flynn, especially when we find out about his plan involving Roxie's diary.
  • Memetic Mutation: "He ran into my knife ten times."
  • Misaimed Fandom: And how!
  • Promoted Fanboy: Before getting the Amos role in the 1996 revival, Joel Grey used "Razzle Dazzle" in 1976 to teach Gonzo the Great how to do a show-stopping act.
  • Uncanny Valley: Roxie, as well as the reporters, in "We Both Reached For the Gun" in the 2002 film version. Oddly enough, the reason it's so eerie is because it's actual people made up, dressed up, and choreographed like marionettes (or a ventriloquist dummy in Roxie's case), making them inhuman enough that it's just plain creepy.
  • Win Back the Crowd: Along with Moulin Rouge, this revived interest in movie musicals.
  • The Woobie: At live shows, Amos's Woobiedom can be measured empirically by listening to the audience's "Awwww"s after "Mister Cellophane".
    • Experience, if not mileage, will vary here. At the Broadway show this troper attended, the Jerkass Audience LAUGHED all throughout the heart-rending Mr. Cellophane. Not sure if sadists, or Completely Missing The Point. Troper felt like choking a few bitches.
    • "My exit music, please." (silence)
    • Poor Hunyak as well.

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