Yes, but...

Rating: 2/10 (3 July 2002)

...go back to the source.
Yes, this was an enjoyable, hallucinogenic, MTV-video-and-sampling-era piece, but much of the hyperbole written by admirers here is probably from the keyboards of those so young they were never fortunate enough to have seen Pennies From Heaven.
No, not that dire 90-minute Hollywood version (what WAS Potter thinking of, anyway?), but the original 1978 TV miniseries featuring Bob Hoskins and Cheryl Campbell. Sure, Baz Luhrmann lays it all on with a trowel, with Meliés moons and even a touch of Murnau tossed in there, but he succeeded more in hurting my eyes than actually blowing my neurons.
Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven, swiftly followed by a dose of the even more potent magic of The Singing Detective (1986), would make this film seem very shallow. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing much but a grasp of fast-food moviemaking and cutting for the attention-challenged. But then again, Pennies From Heaven has 48 votes, and Moulin Rouge had over 20,000 at the last count, so what does that tell you?
Beg, steal, or borrow a copy of the original Pennies From Heaven and then see if what glitters now in Moulin Rouge really IS gold.

P.S. Ewan McGregor made his small-screen début in another Potter production, the slightly iffy but still infinitely superior Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). I wonder how HE compares the two works?