I stared up at the tiled ceiling, patiently waiting for my dentist to resume the restoration to my chipped front teeth she had started just mere minutes earlier. Having just returned from holidays, her attention had been diverted from this task to that of her female co-workers who had suddenly occupied my small partitioned stall. They began to bring each other up-to-date, filling in the two-week lapse Dr. Wang's vacation break had put in their collectively shared schedules. A few minutes later, as I thought Dr. Wang's attention was shifting back towards my jokeresque smile, she informed her friends that her holidays reached a cresendo of sorts when she took in Chicago the night before.

If you were a fly on the wall (or in this case a chipped front tooth patient with vacuums and drills hanging out of his mouth with nowhere to run) you would have thought that Chicago was the peak of movie-making excellence. I hadn't heard much about this movie prior to my dental visit and what brief previews I had seen left me with the impression that it was yet another movie hurriedly rushed to screen on the heels of a similar (and usually more successful) predecessor, in this instance, Moulin Rouge.

It would be six months before I finally sat down to see this spectacle for myself. By this time I was aware of it's success at the Oscar's but even with all it's hype I couldn't help but feel that for the next 113 minutes I would rather be in a dentist's chair than in front of my television set.

I have never been a fan of film-based musicals. When I was 13 years old, I strolled into my local theatre to catch this amazing new film called Grease. Expecting to see characters and a story in the same vein as Happy Days I slowly grew disturbed by the unusally long musical segments which frequently interrupted the story, I believe I even muttered aloud "what the hell is this?". Obviously the music WAS the story, I was old enough to grasp the concept but still I left the theatre wondering why this was a film at all instead of a stage production. This is not to say I can't appreciate an on-screen musical or the work associated with one. It's obvious success and in more recent years Moulin Rouge's remarkable efforts are certainly noteworthy and have met with much acclaim. So, if I get it, but I don't like it and the academy has seen fit to award Chicago five Oscars, what does that say about me? Am I uncouth, ignorant, barren of any class whatsoever? No, I think I'm just an average guy, writing a review about an average movie which happens to be a musical and which I would have found more entertaining to watch live, on stage, if given the choice.

Chicago is simply one long musical broken up ever so briefly with a few spoken lines of dialogue; just enough to carry the plot to the next musical interlude. The diversity of the characters is minimal at best as all seek fame and notirity, it's just how they go about getting it which differs. The musical numbers are metaphors for the character's current situation in the supposed "real world" which we see all too briefly. I suppose they're meant to divert our attention away from more important things, like plot, character development and yes, even chipped front teeth.

It work's for some, it didn't for me.

— Chip Nelson