brought me to tears - it's so bad!

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2001)

I haven't paid to see such a bad film in many a year.
Let me start with what I liked: Ewan McGregor is very attractive & a good actor, and I generally like John Leguizamo (although I did not like the way they portrayed Toulese-Latrec as just some gay stereotype). The only other plus - the costumes & mise-en-scene were very well-done (although I'm sure totally inaccurate).
Otherwise it was so horrible, I almost wish I had paid to see "the Animal" instead. I don't like musicals, but I can usually put up with the genre. Now I could be wrong, but wasn't Ewan McGregor lip-syncing? What pained me the most was the anachronistic use of '80's songs/song lyrics (Nirvana, Madonna & the Police to name a few) -- was just too much for me.

It was the utter rejection of any realism that annoyed me. The lovers float up among Disney-like stars & sprinkles (even their clothes change). A gun comes out of window & flies across (a computer simulated) Paris to strike the Eiffel Tower. I'm willing to grant a lot of poetic license (for example, a realistic victim of consumption hacking up lots of blood & completely emaciated would not have been good) - and certainly in a musical, we expect people to just randomly burst into song & dance -- but some semblance of normality would've been nice.
The writing was mediocre at best. Probably because the were dealing with a terribly trite plot.
I'll spare you further and more specific complaints, because I can't bear to even contemplate this film anymore. I simply had to add a warning as a counterpoint to the comment I saw posted here.