| Product: |
Moulin Rouge! (DVD) |
| Date: |
15/10/02 (331 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: -
Disadvantages: -
On objecting to this I was told I take films too seriously and lack imagination- qualities sadly not evident enough regarding the former in this film, while the latter is represented by a morass of post-modern reference. One for film students to write tedious essays on.
What do I loathe about this film? Well, how about the fact that it is NOT a musical? How does miming to hi-nrg versions of well known pop songs operate on the same level as Cabaret or Singin' in the Rain? God, some of these were so embarrasing- especially Nicole Kidman miming to Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend (always associated with Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and lapses into Madonna's Material Girl (you see Madge made a reference to Diamonds are a...in the video to 1985's Material Girl). Do you see?- how clever- it's an intertextual reference, just like in the over-rated guff that was Romeo & Juliet. Now you too have a paragraph to build an essay on post modernism and the cinema on! Other songs have been ruined for me- T Rex's Children of the Revolution and Lamb's Gorecki; worse is the dumb reversal of Nirvana's "Here we are now/entertain us!". You see Smells Like Teen Spirit is genius, ironising the notion of entertainment and the audience ("Oh whatever neverminds"). Here Baz reverses that lyricalinversion and renders it meaningless...
Ewan McGregor is as appalling and characterless as those he portrays in Attack of the Clones and Black Hawk Down; John Leguizimo has started the decline towards dross like Collatoral Damage. Nicole has the same disease which makes you die and look perfect (see also Love Story and Y Tu Mama Tambien). A tired courtesan story is invoked- if you want to see this done properly watch Powell/Pressburger's The Red Shoes. The whole Bollywood thing has become over-familiar; the video to Basement Jaxx's Romeo is more effective.
And THIS ISN'T A MUSICAL! There are no or
iginal songs that advance either character or narrative- in a manner that the episode 'Once More with Feeling' (Buffy the Vampire Slayer did) and Dennis Potter was doing the whole miming thing to pop songs years ago (see Pennies from Heaven). This is about on the same cultural level as Winona Ryder & Janeane Garafelo singing along to Squeeze's Tempted in Reality Bites.
Oh, sure it looks nice- all cinema does these days with the joys of CGI. Well, it looks like a heterosexual take on the high style of films such as The Conformist, Querelle and American Gigolo. Michael Mann has been making films look this good since Manhunter...
Moulin Rouge! is a truly awful film that does a grave disservice to Toulouse La Trec; better off with The Red Shoes or a litre of absinthe than this banal slab of nothingness.
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