Too Much Avant, Not Enough Garde

Rating: 3/10 (7 July 2001)

I am not the target audience for this movie. I'm not even anywhere downrange. I think I realized this when Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman sang a duet that incorporated a gamut of musical soundbites from Elton John to Whitney Houston, without once touching on a song that I don't personally loathe. The rather odd and jokey placement of modern catchphrases and lyrics in 1900 Paris was actually not as annoying as I had feared; it was often fun to try and catch all the references. But eventually, it degenerated into a tired gimmick. And if "Your Song" ever comes on my car radio again, I'll have to change the station quick or swerve into a tree or something.
The anachronistic song placement is minor compared to the other sins of "Moulin Rouge", which is basically just a Concept masquerading as a movie. There's the story to consider, which seems as if Baz Luhrmann and his accomplice screenwriter just took every cliche they could find (plus a "Smooth 70's" compilation CD) and put them in a blender set on "frappe", then threw the mixture against the wall, in the vain hope that something might stick. It would have been helpful to have some kind of meta-subtitles to help us through the story (ATTENTION: For the next few minutes, this film will be channelling "Camille". Please stand by.) When the story hits a standstill, the movie just repeats its mantras (some yada-yada about Truth and Beauty, and Learning to Love and Be Loved, or something like that) as a way to jump-start the narrative and wake the audience.
Luhrmann's directing style is non-stop frenetic and exhausting, with all the subtlety and nuance of a stainless steel rolling pin. It doesn't work with this material. He did the same thing with "Romeo + Juliet", but at least there he had a better screenwriter. The showy visuals and strange angles don't so much inform the story as try to distract you from it. The Concept is everything here, and it rules "Moulin Rouge" with an iron fist. When a few of the scenes actually threaten to develop cinematic merit on some level, the Concept quickly batters them into submission, and the result is an unholy mess. If incoherence were bullets, this would be a John Woo movie.
The acting is terrible as well. The two leads manage relatively well (Kidman's version of "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" won't make anyone forget Monroe, but it's a treat anyhow), but the rest of the cast is content to chew the scenery, spit it up, and chew it some more. John Leguizamo is a particular disappointment. The man has talent, and when he's on, he's the smartass Peter Lorre of his generation. When he's not, he just yells a lot. Some actors have made a career out of being the best thing in bad movies; Leguizamo seems content to go down with the ship.
You can practically see the sweat stains on this movie as Luhrmann strives to pack as much crap onscreen as possible. The last time anyone was trying this hard in a movie, it was Jude Law crossing the Volga over the objections of homicidal Stukas in "Enemy at the Gates". When it comes to pitiless annihilation, Stukas ain't got nothing on Art.
Ah, well, we'll always have Paris.