This is a musical?

Rating: 3/10 (28 October 2002)

I have absolutely no idea what everyone saw in this film... this thing was Oscar material?
Okay, Nicole Kidman was good - very good, in fact. She was the only good thing about this movie... and she can indeed sing. She does indeed know how to act... even in an abortion like this.
Ewan MacGregor... he may be the flavor of the year (from "Trainspotting" and "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace"), but he doesn't add anything to this movie - anybody could have filled the role.
As for the rest of the cast... the less said, the better.
Let's talk about the camera work... I'm surprised that more theaters didn't report cases of sea sickness during this movie... while we're all used to (by now) all those hand-held cameras that jump around, this one jumps around so much that you don't even have time to identify the player that it is focused on. It zips all over the place like a demented hedgehog, denying you a point of view to anyone.
Next, the music... musicals are supposed to have music - preferably original music, though theater shows such as "ABBA, the Musical" (or whatever it may be called) rely on previously published tunes - not cheap recordings from an oldies station. If they had actually done full songs, that would have been one thing... but just stealing lines from various pop songs of the last 30 years? Ridiculous. Not only did they use individual lines from pop songs of years gone by, but they used the same durn lines over and over and over again... nauseating.
Nicole Kidman was good... as noted, she was the only saving grace of this movie - but only if you have a really desperate Nicole Kidman fix that you need to feed. She deserves an Oscar just for putting up with this poor plot (so very over-used) and direction. She's good... but this movie isn't. Save your money.
I like musicals (to a certain extent), but I'm durned if I know what this was... 'musical' isn't a term that encompasses this abortion of the film-making world.