It's a courtroom farce involving a murderess, a celebrity lawyer, and the press, set in '20s Chicago and told in flashbacks by a newspaperman. Ginger Rogers has the right look for Roxie and she is sexier than ever here, but the editing of her readings is often so poor that her punchlines are painful to listen to. So is a long stretch where Roxie pretends to cry: Ginger's voice is mixed in too loud even for farce. (Was this sloppiness or did somebody want to make her look bad? The rest of the cast don't suffer from these problems.) She's better in the longer takes where she gets to react to Menjou-- he's just like the Barrymore who coached Carole Lombard through "Twentieth Century". George Montgomery has a great presence in the barroom scenes and the character actors are strong. The changes this adaptation makes to Roxie water down the big joke. But it's short (75 min.), the other jokes are funny, and the cast are good, so it's worth seeing.
Review of Roxie Hart
