I'll kill that sound guy.

Rating: 8/10 (3 April 2002)

I gave this movie an 8 because I'm convinced that I'd like it, at least, that much if I had been allowed to see it as it was supposed to have been seen. Unfortunately I ended up seeing it a very tired Sunday at 9 p.m. in a theater where the sound technician were either deaf, on dope or both.
This movie is ... intense. Its imagery is intense as well as its sound. Therefore it became almost impossible to experience for me. On the other hand, I've never been much for musicals and Moulin Rouge is a musical on steroids. It's somewhat difficult to take the plot seriously when everybody's running around, singing everything. The scenes of the show at Moulin Rouge are almost tiring in their excessiveness.
It's got humor, romance, music, sorrow and action but it misses at some point, trying to compress too much movie into too little space. Or maybe it's just that some songs are way too cheesy. Or maybe I'm just tired and grumpy. The point I'm trying to make is that, being such an intense film, you really need to have the perfect setting for it, or you will just not like it (like me).
Oh, and one very big positive thing: They all actually sing their own songs. Without that the whole movie would just be laughable, at best.