The Mill On The Dross

Rating: Null/10 (17 December 2003)

The favorable reviews (by paid critics in the International Press) for this piece of drek (though I have no objection if it cops a Blue Ribbon as Best Of Breed at Crufts and/or the Kennel Club) illustrate to a fare thee well a social phenomena: Critics Are Getting Younger. It seems that the average critic today is a failed busboy/girl at Denny's and/or Burger King/MacDonalds who figured that filing copy was better than stacking shelves at Safeway. The major qualification seems to be 'sure, I'm qualified, I've seen 102 slasher' movies and/or 'I've seen Nightmare On Elm Street 36 times'. These cats have little or no frame of reference to guide them, if they HAVE actually heard of 'Citizen Kane' they think it's about that son of Adam who killed his brother and went to live in the Land of Nod. Their idea of in-depth movie analysis is Premiere. If they'd actually seen, say, Renoir's 'French Can Can' or Huston's 'Moulin Rouge' (both covering loosely the same subject) let alone even HEARD of either, they may not have been so hasty at garlanding this bad joke. What beats me is WHY anyone would want to make a movie set in a Definite period and then, deliberately GRAFT onto it the style/music of a later era. In 1953 Cole Porter wrote his penultimate Broadway Show, 'Can Can' and to do so he PAINSTAKINGLY fashioned a score that was redolent of French Music Hall at the turn of the 19th Century. Sure, he employed sophistication and wit but without drawing attention to them. The number in THIS movie that drew all the notices is 'Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend', a very sophisticated lyric (by Leo Robin) set to an equally sophisticated melody (by Jule Styne) but VERY MUCH in the style of the late 1940s, when it was written. In 1899 the music to be heard in Paris was the same as in London or New York. Mostly Viennese waltzes or two-steps, simple - if sometimes haunting - melodies and even simpler lyrics. The people who crawled out from under a rock to write and direct this travesty, to say nothing of those who cut it with a pair of secataurs, give the impression they have been walking upright only since Tuesday and have absolutely no concept of what cinema is all about. The same kind of people who think that 'new' automatically means 'better'. Minus 5 stars.