Insufferable!

Rating: Null/10 (6 February 2002)

After only 20 minutes of screening, I stopped the video and looked at my wife. She had the same puzzled what-the-hell-is-that look on her face. I asked her if she wanted to keep on viewing it and she told me to let it run for another 5-10 minutes to see if it got any better. It never did. That's one rental that didn't take long to rewind and get back to the store.
Try to imagine a two hour long musical clip, with a pace set on hyperspeed, frantic camera work that seems to be out of control, a musical score that has not the slightest relation with the era concerned, excess of scenography and special effects to compensate for the lack of likeness and you get a phony broadway musical like Moulin Rouge.
The main problem with this movie is that it was intended for an MTV audience who obviously doesn't really care what the french cancan and the Paris of the 1800s were really like, as long as there's a karaoke of number one hits sung by big hollywood names to make it "fun and exciting to watch". The directors knew that well and that's why it became so popular.
When this movie came out, critics said that viewers would either love it or hate it. Simply put, it is one of the most irritating and disappointing things we've seen in years.
Rating: 2/10 and that goes for the soundtrack as well. I still like the originals, though.