Visually luscious and irresistibly charming...

Rating: 6/10 (30 August 2005)

Moulin Rouge is one of those movies that depend on style over substance. It is very simply a love story that has been told many times over, and throws no fresh light on said love story and provides no original insight. It has not much to do with the actual club Moulin Rouge, which serves simply as a setting for the love story the movie centers on, with a few characters drawn from history (such as the "dwarf" Toulouse-Lautrec) and thrown in for comical effect.
That being said, the sets and costumes and saturated colors in the movie are very appealing to the eye and, combined with the rather touching romance between Satine and Christian (interesting choice of names, by the way...) and quirkiness of the characters and dance numbers, are enough to hold your attention, especially once the movie gains momentum (it comes off rather strange and random at first and takes some settling into). Nicole Kidman is, of course, dazzling in the role of the sultry Satine, and her voice is quite good. Ewan McGregor's, while not as melodic as Kidman's, is good enough to serve the movie's purposes, and I'm sure a great many women have swooned/will swoon over his character. It is impossible not to be warmed at least a little by the two's secret love, although I was not quite sure why they fell in love in the first place...
The dance numbers that are drawn from an amalgamated variety of modern songs are rather tacky but manage to work (some of them are barely pulled off, in my mind, and some are quite good). "Roxanne" is definitely my favorite in the movie (as many people will agree), probably because it's in the more conventional and serious style of musical numbers.