Come see Predictable Predictable!

Rating: 3/10 (1 February 2008)

My fiancée, whom I love dearly, had been bugging me to see this movie since we began dating. Now, she is a huge Star Wars fan, and I began to suspect this may have been a case of Ewan-desire and not so much for the movie itself. I still think that's the case. However, I also went into this expecting to enjoy it because I adore musicals. I pointed out that I would have walked out of the theater during the chaotic, pointless beginning but was glad she told me it was a good movie, possibly had a bad beginning. (Side note here: Why do movies perpetuate the myth that Absinthe does.. well.. anything? It's just an anise wine. It's a clean drunk and nothing more, people. Yes, Wormwood is an hallucinogenic... BUT ONLY IN DOSES BIG ENOUGH TO KILL AN ELEPHANT!!) My walk out instinct would have been correct. What a piece of garbage... from the music on down to the plot. The second I heard something from Nirvana, my guts recoiled. But I thought it was a onetime thing just to be cute. Then the movie went on and on and on and on with that crap. Hey, when you're writing a musical? Write at least one or two of your own bleeping songs. Unoriginal hack. Even the big romantic number, Come What May? I can't place it exactly but I am SURE I've heard it before.
My fiancée can attest that I knew everything that was going to happen as surely as I could sing the next line of almost every song before the characters did. I said "She's going to die of some illness." about 10 seconds after she started dancing with Ewan's character. According to her we were told she dies at the beginning.. but I wasn't in the room yet. The plot was stiflingly boring and predictable, replete with the obligatory forced part wherein Satine tries to convince what's-his-name that she didn't love him. Blah blah blah money, blah blah dying. Blah blah all rich people are evil. Yammer patter whore with a heart of gold. Art and love are truth blah blah the show must go on yammer blah blah. *Yawn* At any point after the first 15 minutes I could have paused the movie, told her the rest of the story, and only have missed some pointless subplot about the proposed ending of the play.
This gets a 2, at least, because.. hey Ewan can SING! And sing WELL. It's just painful to hear WHAT they made him sing.
And I don't care what the directors and whatnot say. Nicole Kidman is not singing in this movie. She is so obviously lip-syncing it that it's painful to watch.
MY overall advice? The beginning was a great hint that I would have been wise to take. This movie is all flash and pretty swirly distracting stuff.
...incidentally, nobody would ever refer to the famous dance as doing the "can can can". When you say it three times, it means something about Euclidean geometry.