When I started reading longwinter's review I thought "Finally, someone who feels like I do about this pretentious piece of shit," but no, he turned to the dark side in the end, leaving me forced to review a movie that I couldn't even watch to the end, just in order to give some balance to this node. Unfortunately I didn't go to see Moulin Rouge in the cinema, otherwise I would have had the pleasure of walking out in public and tearing up my ticket in front of the ushers (who would probably have thought I was an idiot). I rented it and watched it at home.
There are only two other movies that I remember being unable to watch to the end, and I have watched a zillion movies. They were Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (which I rented from the video store and brought back after half an hour - the video store clerk gave me another free of charge) and Dungeons and Dragons (too annoying to be funny, too badly acted to be exciting). Moulin Rouge is in pretty bad company, though I do acknowledge that many people found Bill and Ted funny for some reason.
After the first few minutes, and a long, impressive, stylish opening shot which flies through the dark Paris streets, zooming in on faces and out again over the buildings, I thought Moulin Rouge was going to be great. I even thought it was going to be pretty good after a few frenzied flashbacks through Ewan McGregor's character's memory, by way of introduction. But once the movie itself actually began, and the narcoleptic Argentinian fell through the ceiling to be followed closely by ten minutes of insane, epilepsy-inducing dialogue and cheesy musical slapstick, I found myself gaping in horror.
I asked the person I was watching it with, who had seen it before, "Is it all like this?" and she said that the tone did change in different scenes, but the style stayed pretty much the same. Still, I decided to wait and give it a chance. I sat through the cringeful "Smells like Teen Spirit" all-singing, all-dancing routine that introduces us to the Moulin Rouge itself. I sat through Nicole Kidman singing "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" while hundreds of men in suits drooled and grimaced. I gaped in even more horror as a bedroom farce unfolded between Kidman and McGregor and a gurning parody of a Duke which eventually ended up involving most of the cast so far performing a high-speed, amphetamine-fuelled synopsis of their proposed musical. Finally I couldn't take any more, and we turned it off.
Don't get me wrong. Moulin Rouge is a very stylish film - extremely stylish, just like Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet was. In fact, that was my problem. It's all style and no substance. People have been going on and on in the preceding writeups about how the message of this movie is "Love conquers all", which I'm sure is a very worthy message, but I think it fails miserably to make this point, and if it does fail at this, then there is nothing else to recommend it. If I painted myself bright scarlet, glued a thousand sequins to my naked flesh, dyed my hair neon green and ran through the city with cymbals and a bugle screaming "LOVE CONQUERS ALL!!!! LOVE CONQUERS ALL!!!!!" then I'd probably get a lot of attention, but no one would love each other any more because of me. This movie is the same. I'm sure it got Baz Luhrman lots of praise and attention for being so innovative and so stylish, but there is no real feeling or love in the movie whatsoever. (I remind you that I stopped watching halfway, so feel free to tell me "Alan, you're so wrong, halfway through it totally changed, Terrence Malick took over the direction and they got Ian McKellen to do Ewan McGregor's part and it all took place in a remote Greek village, and dolphins and monkeys! Yeah!")
The cinematography that everyone raved about gave me a headache, and I've danced all night at raves with no problem so I'm not exactly photosensitive. The deliberately outrageous and grotesque acting didn't make me squeal with ironic pleasure, it just made me want to strangle that cracked-out Andrew Lloyd Webber who directed it, and the various clever plot devices of plays within plays which worked so well for Shakespeare were just boring and unoriginal. The self-consciously cheesy songs and meta-meta-postmodern ironic-oh-so-witty-bullshit dialogue just left me waiting and waiting for someone, anyone, to say anything real. Style without content is no good to anyone. Take away all the glitter and mad camerawork and screaming and running around, and you have a dull vaudeville plot with nothing to recommend it. And to anyone who says, "That's the whole point!" I can only say: If that really is the point, then I'm glad I didn't waste any more of my time with it.
So there you have it. Moulin Rouge: a big, shiny, glittery-painted, sweetly-perfumed, loudly-shouting turd. With a lollipop stick stuck in it. On a podium. Being praised by everyone. If you ask me, Baz Luhrman must be laughing his ass off.
Postscript -
Rana just gave me this URL -
http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/moulinrouge.html in which the
Filthy Critic gives a review astonishingly like mine, only more vitriolic. I swear I didn't rip him off. Go read it!