Spectacular Spectacular!

Rating: Null/10 (2 June 2001)

Moulin Rouge, a musical set in turn-of-the-century Paris, is eye candy, artistic, magnificent, funny, heart-breaking, and great all rolled into one reel of celluloid.
The story takes place in 1899, in Paris France. Young poet Christian (Ewan McGregor) comes to Paris in hopes to find inspiration for his writing and inspiration for love. While in Paris, he meets four strange characters who decide to try to get him to be the head writer of a play being worked on called "Spectacular Spectacular", to be shown at the ever famous night club Moulin Rouge. So these men take Christian there and arrange a meeting between Christian and Satine (Nicole Kidman), the star dancer of the club and aspiring actress who longs for a better life than being a dancing hooker (well, who wouldn't?). However, the arrangement was made by deceivement-Satine was supposed to meet with The Duke (Richard Roxburgh), who wants to turn the night club into a theater and who also lusts for Satine. Anyway, during the meeting between Christian and Satine, Christian falls in love with Satine and although she's afraid to admit it, she falls in love with him too. But this love is forbidden-see, Satine is forbidden by Moulin Rouge's owner to ever fall in love. And also, The Duke wants Satine to himself. All of these facts cause Christian and Satine's romance to must be a secret. So basically, the movie follows the story of their romance and the construction of the play for Moulin Rouge.
This movie was beautiful. Baz Luhrman worked excellently with this film. The cinematic work was breathtaking-even the opening 20th Century Fox fanfare was creative, what with an orchestra leader leading the "players" of the fanfare. Great! And the symbolism of just how great Moulin Rouge seemed was excellent-outside of the club, it was dreary, gray, and dark. But inside it was bright and colorful. Very well done.
The acting was just as great. Nicole Kidman gave a really good performance as Satine-you were able to believe that Satine wasn't very happy with her lifestyle. Ewan McGregor was also magnificent, giving his best. I thought he was the best actor in this movie. All of the acting was great.
I loved the songs! Some people might've thought that using snips of current songs was annoying, but I thought it was very well done. My favorite mix was the clash of Lady Marmalade and Smells Like Teen Spirit.
The movie had a way of drawing all of the audience members. This is one of the only movies I've seen that the audience responded to other than laughter-saying things like "Oooooooh!", etc.
Very very very well made. This is a movie I'll never forget and a movie that art moviegoers and popcorn moviegoers can enjoy with equal amounts of likeness. Best movie made in 2001 I've seen so far. 10/10, A