BOB Fosse made Hollywood's last over-the-top, flawed but scarily exhilarating song-and-dance movie in All That Jazz as long ago as 1979.

His vaudevillian choreography for Chicago has been enjoying a stage revival on Broadway since 1996, with the "Drop-Dead Musical" transferring to London a year later and now doing the provincial rounds.

May the Fosse be with you, you wish, for the film version that lays claim to reviving the Hollywood musica. But, alas, all it shares with All That Jazz is a song of the same title and spectacular haute couture that may well spark a fashion revival.

For his brash, flash, energetically cinematic production, director Rob Marshall has assembled an experienced if heavy-legged Swansea hoofer turned Hollywood siren, Catherine Zeta Jones; an absurdly bony but bonny Renee Zellweger (who has shed far too much weight since her chocolate-chomping days in Bridget Jones's Diary); and that sly silver fox Richard Gere, well cast here as smug lawyer Billy Flynn.

In 1929 corrupt Chicago, just as now, the lust for 15 minutes of tawdry fame is alive and high-kicking in two murderesses, vamping showgirl Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) and hopeful hoofer Roxie Hart (Zellweger).

Awaiting trial, they are banged up at Cook County Jail under the tight regime of crooked prison matron Morton (singer Queen Latifah in the mama of all big mama roles).

To escape their murder raps, they need the oxygen of newspaper headlines and the slippery skills of the devious Flynn.

Amid the glamour in the slammer, Marshall's cynical and superficial film lets the sly digs at American corruption bubble away underneath the frothy surface. However, despite turning the nostalgic dance numbers into stylised figments of the imagination introduced by an MC, it never remedies the problem of Chicago being a dance-driven vehicle.

For a movie that espouses the deceptive virtues of applying razzle-dazzle, ironically it tries too hard to pull exactly the same ruse. The dance numbers lack momentum and rhythm, so does the dialogue, and the more excitable the dancing becomes, the less exciting is the visual impact.

As for sexiness and sassiness, the Twenties were meant to roar not bore.

Updated: 09:46 Friday, January 17, 2003