not for the artistically deprived!

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 2001)

This movie is great art. It revived my faith in the medium of film and it revived my faith in humanity.
I went into it not caring much for Nicole Kidman and expecting that the anachronistic use of modern pop songs would be a travesty. Boy, was I wrong, on both counts. Kidman was utterly fantastic (she has got to win an Oscar!) and the use of pop songs was delightful. Ewan McGregor? Well, I liked him OK before, but he captured my heart in this. He was beautiful and luminous. Everyone was. They let their lights shine. That's thanks to Baz Luhrmann. He helped them to open up and do the weird scary stuff, like singing (which was so moving that it brought me to tears many times). Yes, the script was negligible but look what they did with it! Compare, for instance, to "Phantom Menace", which was an exercise on how to degrade the talents of wonderful actors.
"Moulin Rouge" isn't a perfect film by any means -- there's a section in the middle that feels disconnected and choppy, and I wish there was more dancing shown -- but no great work of art is completely perfect.
If this movie doesn't win a cartload of Oscars then there's no justice in the world. But even if it doesn't, I'll still treasure it. Like the best films of all time, it catapults you to a different universe and brings you back changed for the better.
Another opinion: my husband, a musician who has played in so many musicals that he hates the genre (and almost never sees movies more than once), has seen it twice. He thinks it's the best movie musical ever made. We can't wait for the DVD to come out!