Daring, and mostly successful

Rating: 9/10 (7 June 2001)

Moulin Rouge is a refreshing break from today's world of test-marketed, demographically targeted, homogonized hollywood garbage. Loosely based around the myth of Oprheus, it's obviously the realization of Baz's dream rather than the result of committees and rewrites based on test screening report cards.
The first half of the movie is dazzling and inventive, shockingly fun and surprisingly light on its feet. The movie slows a bit in the second half and gets more serious, but for me it still pulled it off quite nicely. Sure, it doesn't succeed all the time, and I would have edited it down about 10 minutes (mostly in the rehersal for the show-within-the-show), but so what? This is not a *perfect* film, this is a *very, very good* film.
I completely understand why some people don't like Moulin Rouge. The movie takes a lot of chances, and isn't afraid to do completely unconventional (even absurd) things. This is not a "safe" movie in any sense of the word. To enjoy it, you really have to just let Baz take you through his vision; if you expect it to cater to your preconceptions of what a movie or musical should be like, you're going to be disappointed.
However, if you've got any imagination at all, and you want to see something truly different -- go see this film right now. It really is something special.