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Rating:  -
I am a huge fan of Bob Fosse in general, and of this movie specifically. However, the current Special Music Edition DVD (which replaces the now-discontinued original DVD release) has several flaws that prevent me from giving this a full five-star rating.
(1) Incomplete picture: this film deserves to be viewed in a letterbox format that delivers the full picture as the director intended; pan-and-scan is unfortunately the only format provided here.
(2) Dark picture: there's a lot of murkiness in the shadows, much more than in the previous released version. This renders some of the action (especially in Scene 5 with Victoria) nearly invisible.
(3) Commentary thinness: the commentary provided by editor Alan Heim is fun, but could be so much more. Why isn't the scene commentary provided by the late Roy Scheider from the prior DVD release also included on this one? And why haven't other leads (particularly Ann Reinking, who has played such a big part in the resurgence of popular interest in Fosse's work) been tapped to be a part of this?
(4) Special Features filler: unfortunately, there just isn't a lot here. We've got two short featurettes of Fosse colleagues talking about his dances, intercut with numbers from the movie. The rest of the special features menu just raises questions. Why is there an interview with George Benson about recording the opening song, "On Broadway?" It's unnecessary and not at all illuminating. Do we really need a direct menu to all the musical numbers? I thought that's what the scene selection menu was for. And a singalong of "Take Off With Us?" You've gotta be kidding me; what a waste of time and menu space. In their place, imagine what could have been included: how about an overview of his choreography for film, from "Kiss Me Kate" and "My Sister Eileen" forward? Or even better, a non-fictional look at Fosse's life for comparison -- couldn't somebody have talked to the folks at PBS and included its Emmy Award-winning hour-long biography on him, which aired in 1990 but remains unreleased?
I hope that one day, "All That Jazz" finally receives the DVD release it deserves. Until then, the Special Music Edition will have to do.
Rating:  -
Bob Fosse's thinly-veiled autobiographical homage is everything a movie musical should be -- lively, tuneful, funny and even poignant.
With a cast which includes the wonderfully sexy Roy Scheider of Jaws (Widescreen Anniversary Collector's Edition) fame, Fosse acolytes Ann Reinking and Ben Vereen, and a fabulous pre-plastic surgery Jessica Lange as the gorgeous, ever-present Angel of Death, this musical story of a genius Broadway director with a death-wish, is nothing short of mesmerizing.
The story follows Fosse's own life story closely enough to be almost eerie -- even foreshadowing his ultimate demise from heart failure at an out-of-town new play try-out in Washington, D.C., which happened years after this movie was released. But even if it didn't, the movie stands on its own as a very gritty, sweaty and true-to-life look at what it takes to make it on Broadway.
This Special Music Edition of the DVD has some excellent special features. I especially liked the featurette on the evolution of Fosse's iconic choreography.
If you loved Cabaret (for which Fosse won the Best Director Oscar), and Chicago,( the play of which Fosse originally directed and choreographed on Broadwway), you will love this movie. And if you love it, you should have it in your permanent collections. Fosse was a true American treasure. His unique dance stylings will be influencing choreographers for generations to come.
Rating: -
Fosse's "All that Jazz" is one of my all time favorite movies and I don't generally enjoy big production dance movies. In this movie, Fosse, through his actor, Roy Scheider, gets to play himself with all his talent, weakness, brilliance, stupidy, self-indulgence...and...evil. He lets us feel the phrenetic pace of an overcharged life and he shows us the fears, along with the associated thick skin, that come along with being a choreographer and playwrite. Without an effort to justify himself, he shows his opportunism in seducing young women trying to make it big. He shows us something of the women and child that he has injured but who are, at the same time, trying to save him from himself.
He shows a man dying of overwork, drug abuse and guilt. He shows us a man who simply doesn't care. He has a heart attack but lives...for a time...but a man like Fosse/Gideon simply doesn't live for long. They burn up like a short burning match. The movie is great but the last scene is even better. Death comes to him in the form of the hauntingly beautiful Jessica Lange. There is a truly remarkable dance routine centered on a jiving Ben Vereen. Everybody is there...everybody from his past...the strippers, whores, wife, child, girl friends, angry business partners. The rockin' tune is "There goes my Baby" and the rhythm is that of Fosse/Gideon's beating heart. Vereen's perfect eulogy is on the mark, "And you AIN'T nobody's friend." Bomp, bomp, bomp...bomp. Sweet death gets closer, closer, closer. Fosse/Gideon--or whatever is left of him--are brutally zipped up in a body bag. Terrific. Terrific and brilliant. Fosse has gone and choreographed his own death.
Ron Braithwaite author of novels, "Hummingbird God" and "Skull Rack"--on the Conquest of Mexico
Rating: -
Or should that be jazzier? Very entertaining film, but it's not all fun and games. There's definitely some dark stuff here, this is no "Meet Me in Saint Louis" style musical. But the songs and dancing are great, the story and acting are great. If you haven't seen this before, you're in for a treat. A really original film with many great, memorable scenes.
Rating: -
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)
Even at the tender age of ten, I was already both a ravening cinephile and a hardcore music fan. Cabaret was one of my favorite movies as a youngster (and doesn't it strike you, too, as odd that I would be exposed to such a movie repeatedly at such a tender age?), so it seemed to me, at the time, that All That Jazz, Fosse's other huge musical blockbuster, was a natural. My parents, however, were not so sure; stills from the movie combined with it being rated R for "graphic depictions of surgery" convinced my mother that there was some form of weird, and nude, interpretive dance going on with surgery as its theme. Well, mom, I'm here to tell you, finally, that a chest spreader is not an interpretive dance-- that really is a graphic depiction of surgery. (However, it's worth noting that nowadays, you see this sort of thing on shows like ER all the time, so don't let that stop you.) But, yeah, like the man said, "will there be [censored for Amazon consumption]?". Yup. Of course, as a ten-year-old, that's the other half of why I wanted to see this movie. It's twenty-nine years later, and I finally have.
The story: this is basically Bob Fosse's autobiography, through his alter ego Joe Gideon (Roy Schieder), a workaholic philanderer. We see him in the throes of putting together a stage show while at the same time overediting an epic film about a standup comedian (in real life, this is his 1974 flick Lenny), having flings with a bunch of starlets, trying hard, but in vain, to connect with his daughter (Erszebet Foldi, who never acted in another film), and indulging in the vast overuse of, well, just about everything he can get his hands on. I have to say that all of this leads to a pretty predictable outcome, but I also have to say that man, I did not see that ending coming. Maybe I should have, but wow.
It's a truism that, seeing a film thirty years after its release, you're going to be looking for different stuff than you would have thirty years before, and such is the case here. One of the great parts of this movie, for me, was seeing actors who have grown into brand names early in their careers (most notably John Lithgow and CCH Pounder), but the spectacle of this thing is just as amazing now as I'm sure it was then; I say this, mind you, as someone who generally can't stand musicals, despite my love of both film and music. Fosse obviously did this one from the heart, and it shows in every frame. Everything about this flick is top-notch; even if you don't like musicals, I highly recommend it. **** ½
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