Flawed beauty

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2002)

I was REALLY looking forward to this. The opening credits only heightened the anticipation and for the first twenty minutes or so it was a magnificent spectacle, but then the film got bogged down in repetitive padding. The musical numbers seemed ten times as long as they needed to be and I started to get both bored and irritated, a mood which carried on to the end credits - a shame, as performances were great and the whole film looked absolutely stunning. But I would rather have had more of a script which did justice to the film rather than the same bloody Elton John song seemingly over and over again. I shall rent it out at a later date, just to enjoy the beauty all over again, but I'll be fast forwarding over a lot of the musical bits......