‘Chicago’ is a must-see; ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ is truly a nightmare

In theaters

FREDDY VS. JASON, directed by Ronny Yu, written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, 115 minutes, rated R.

For pure box office draw, it’s tough to beat a title like “Freddy vs. Jason.” For some, the idea alone carries as much weight as, say, “Dracula vs. Frankenstein,” “King Kong vs. Godzilla,” “Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster” or, for a more timely twist, “Arnie vs. Gray.”

Unfortunately, the reality of “Freddy vs. Jason” is more in keeping with the lesser-known Spanish film, “The Wolfman vs. The Transsexuals.” The promise is there for a hilarious good time, but the venture is such a sloppy, uninvolving drag, it rarely offers audiences the hair-raising spectacle they expect.

Based on a screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, “Freddy vs. Jason” takes two exhausted pop-culture icons – Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) of the long-running “Nightmare on Elm Street” series and Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirziner) of the longer-running “Friday the 13th” franchise – and brings them back for yet another chance at life.

Fittingly, the story begins in hell with Freddy worming his way into Jason’s dreams. Since Jason is dead and can no longer dream, the movie already is on shaky ground, but never mind. Logic doesn’t matter here. In these movies, logic was bludgeoned long ago. What does matter is that Freddy’s meddling jolts Jason back from the dead and inspires him to the senseless slaughtering of several unlikable, barely clad coeds and shrill teenage boys.

When the film’s core group of teens (Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Kelly Rowland) hear that it might be Freddy doing the killing, they become terrified, which is exactly what Freddy wants as it launches him back into their nightmares. There, he wreaks all sorts of havoc before his bruised ego leads him to a rote showdown with the machete-wielding Jason.

Few expect flashes of genius from any of this, but nobody likes laziness, regardless of the genre, or dumb writing, which this flick has in spades in spite of being in the works for the past 11 years.

All Yu had to do to succeed was to offer some fresh, reasonably inventive ways to get sliced and diced, a measure of wit, some characters in which we could invest ourselves, and a few memorable jolts along the way. He falls well short of that, saddling audiences with a buckets-of-blood mentality that deadens the spirit and drowns his film.

Grade: D-

On video and DVD

CHICAGO, directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall, written by Bill Condon, based on the musical play by Fred Ebb, John Kander and Bob Fosse, 108 minutes, rated PG-13.

Set in Prohibition-era Chicago, this six-time Academy Award winner stars Rene Zellweger as Roxie Hart, a frustrated chorus-girl wannabe who murders her lover, Fred (Dominic West), when he fails to come through with a promised audition and who then uses the media – not to mention her bumbling husband, Amos (John C. Reilly) – to achieve the superstardom she craves.

Already cooling her cans in the big house is Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Velma Kelly, a popular vaudeville performer who, as the movie opens, has just murdered her own sister and husband after catching them in the sack.

Now, with both Velma and Roxie simmering in the same jail, it’s up to Richard Gere’s flamboyant attorney, Billy Flynn, to spring them free while keeping them where they want to be – smack in the middle of the public eye. Based on Bob Fosse’s 1975 musical “Chicago,” which itself was inspired by Maurine Dallas Watkins’ 1926 play and William A. Wellman’s 1942 film, “Roxie Hart,” Marshall’s version is a big, bawdy, cynical crapshoot updated for the masses with timely observations on our culture’s fascination with instant fame.

The film exists on two levels, shifting between Roxie’s ripe imagination, in which most of the dazzlingly conceived song-and-dance numbers ensue, and the grimness of real-life Chicago, where Roxie and Velma are sweating it out in jail and fighting for their lives in court. What gives the film added sizzle is its element of surprise, the best of which comes from the selection of its cast. Who would have thought that Rene Zellweger had it in her to become the pouty-lipped pixie Roxie, a murdering diva with a rotten heart and a voice of gold?

Or that Catherine Zeta-Jones had a soaring voice that somehow reaches higher than her legs and plunges deeper than her neckline? Or that Richard Gere – so rigid and so serious for so long – would finally loosen up to belt out Kander and Ebb’s famous show tunes as if he were born to do it?

There is nothing in any of their film careers (not even Gere’s turn in “The Cotton Club”) that hints at what they put on screen here, which makes “Chicago” one of those rare films whose casting is a slick sleight-of-hand and pure inspiration.

With Queen Latifah in a wicked supporting turn as “the keeper of the keys, the countess of the clink, the mistress of murders’ row, Matron Mama Morton,” Christine Baranski as newspaper reporter Mary Sunshine, and a terrific soundtrack, “Chicago” is exciting and electrifying, raising the bar already lifted by 2001’s “Moulin Rouge” – and leaping over it to shoot to the moon.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.