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The long-running and successful theatre piece Chicago was moved to the big screen in 2002 with a lavish and high-budget production that indulged in the work's color, flash and musical excess. This would widely be considered one of the most successful film adaptations of a stage musical to yet be released. Indeed, it would receive wide critical acclaim, winning the Best Picture Oscar that year and experiencing considerable profitability.

And from the perspective of a musical, the film would be extremely effective in simultaneously remaining on point and delivering an aural experience that is fun and properly fitted. The setting of the film, in Jazz Age Chicago, offers not just the opportunity to explore the burgeoning celebrity and metropolitan cultures of America, but also the opportunity to ground the show's songwriting into a certain milieu. The brassy vaudevillian sound of the era, the sultry and troublesome female vocal performance and the proclivity toward occasional pratfall all were readily appealed to in the script and production numbers. The opportunities available to the filmmakers in the historical context of the story would be effectively exploited in the musical.

In this regard, Chicago excels where so many modern musicals have failed. The difficult adaptation to film often places a considerable demand on filmmakers to bridge the gap between plausible film acting and bearable singing or dancing. With the general exception of Richard Gere, who is dead wood on film as per usual, the players in this film comfortably straddle the line of acting and theatrical performance with the same enthusiasm as permeates the screenplay itself. Underscored by intriguing themes of a culture sick with celebrity worship and a morality corrupted by selfish materialism, Chicago is purposefully playful.