A pathetic pastiche of half-baked ideas

Rating: 1/10 (24 May 2001)

Moulin Rouge is a massive waste of time and money, and you should waste neither of yours on it.
It is all at once juvenile, under developed, terribly scripted, poorly acted, woefully unfunny, singularily unsexy and, most importantly of all, hideously directed by someone who, time and time again, demonstrates that he doesn't know when to take his foot off the accelerator.
What constantly amazes me is that such ridiculous out of control rubbish as this is seen as an example of some sort of new cinema. It isn't. It's just bad cinema. Baz Lurhmann has, like lots of other ambitious amateurs, a sort of "horror vacui". He has absolutely no comprehension of what to leave out, so he just throws it all in an attempt to cover up the fact that he doesn't know what he is doing.
Please, please, please if you enjoyed this swill, watch the following as some sort of remedial treatment course to see what the TRUE masters of glorious excess are capable of. Watch Busby Berkeley. Watch Vincente Minelli. Watch Ken Russell (anyone who sniggers at that suggestion yet can still embrace Lurhmann is kidding themselves). Watch Dennis Potter. Watch Bob Fosse. Watch (selected) Alan Parker. Don't accept pale imitations!!!
Above all, probably the biggest crime of this film is what could have been. The milieu is so fantastic that to have it vandalised in such a mediocre way is truly heartbreaking.