Moulin Rouge Rating: 2 out of 6.
Within 10 seconds, one word comes to mind: Gimmicky. Baz Luhrmann has made good films in the past, but has botched this one. He tries to be extravigant and decadent, but instead succeeds in being garish and surfacy. While there is the element of reflecting the environment he portrays, somewhere he got very very lost, lucky he had a good story to save him from a garish mess.
Marilyn Rouge is a musical set at the start of the last century about a chapter in the lives of a performer (Nicole Kidman) and a poet (McGregor) and the intertwining of their lives and their careers.
Unfortunately, the movie so self-aware of its top 40 musical orientation that it akwardly stumbles through nearly every number, employing parody at times to excuse itself (which is fun and amusing the first few times, but truly embarrising many times later). The movie lacks beauty. It spends more time telling you it is beautiful than it does actually being beautiful, which leaves you with an insecure and try-hard aftertaste.
This is even more a pity in light that the plot and story actually are a beautiful story which is told in a clever and graceful way. There is some excellent acting (among some very average acting) and clever cinematrography and story-telling ideas. In fact, about two thirds of the way through the movie, it takes a notable turn to being almost what it could have been all the way through - a beautiful story told with grace and humour.
Two things hugely let this movie down, and they are both things that may have allowed the movie to truly blossom. The extravigance is pounded in to saturation point, in the sets, the script, and the overacting. The story and story-telling itself is beautiful and graceful, but has the extravigance stapled onto it in a garish attempt to convey a sense of beauty. Also letting the movie down was the self-conscious way that the top 40 music was used. Rather than simply allowing the qualities of the music to flow through the story, they instead choose to force it in and shove it down the audience. Occassionally, it is laughing with the audience at clever top 40 musical segues, but all too often it shifts into a number and instead of the music allowing the passion of the moment to flow into you, it actually does the opposite and tears you out of the moment as you recognise the song, and keeps you foriegn to the emotion as it dances around in a parody of what it describes.
That said, there are many people who would not want to bother watching this movie in this way, and who may not find it garish as I did. The pity is that this movie could have been enjoyable for nearly everyone, but instead is lying in the same pile as much other Hollywood schlock.
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