Stunning beauty but thin in substance

Rating: 5/10 (23 December 2004)

"Beautiful" is a word to describe Moulin Rouge. It is terrific sounding, decadent, full of splendor, and ... well ... obnoxious.
It is a polarizing film, either fresh and exciting or clichéd and overblown. So I find myself at odds because I am rating this film a 5 on the IMDb scale. That's right, directly in the middle. It is a simple matter of mathematics. The story is probably a 3 or 4 but the music and staging is so breathtaking, it lifts the film up to at least mediocrity.
The plot is simply told. Above all else it is a love story told from the point of view of a Bohemian writer who is in love with a Moulin Rouge dancer/singer/whatever. There you have the flaw. With a love story such as this you have to feel the connection between the characters, above all you have to feel love.
Moulin Rouge's characters seem like actors playing their parts, with the possible exception of Ewan McGregor who seemed more and more genuine as the film progressed. Nicole Kidman received praise for her portrayal of the tormented prostitute who must choose between love or sensibility. I found her performance elegant looking and sounding but without much depth or feeling.
The production is as much a character as the actors. The musical numbers run from stunning beauty (as when McGregor and Kidman perform "Come What May") to the inane (Jim Broadbent prancing around singing Madonna's "Like a Virgin"). The entire movie was filmed on a soundstage in Australia and it has a sort of claustrophobic feel. But it also reminds me of images from a time well before my own when musicals were shot entirely on giant soundstages bursting with color and exploding with sound.
Director Baz Luhrmann succeeds in making a film unlike any other. Perhaps that is a nod to the Bohemian brotherhood in the film's story. But if that were true, why not spend more time baking the story rather than marching on to the next schizophrenic eye-candy piece? The obsessive jump-cuts, maniacal characters, color washed sets, and extravagant costumes all yell out "we're overblown and we know it!" But isn't self-congratulatory vanity still just vanity? I wonder what the style of the film is attempting to say about the Bohemians, are they lashing out against average society's morals and taboos or are they just being different? **.5 out of ****