voice of dissent

Rating: 4/10 (18 December 2001)

I'm sure everyone else loved this movie...
But I didn't.
It certainly isn't as bad as some things I've seen, but after hearing such high praise for this film I was expecting MUCH, MUCH MORE.
I knew the film was a musical, however I didn't know that all the music was lifted from other musicals/musicians and then sung karaoke style. I was not impressed and couldn't help but groan when they began to sing Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' as a dance number. It's like taking the lyrics of 'Rage Against the Machine' and putting them in a Hansen video... the two just don't fit together, and taking the music out of it's context like that completely negates what the original artist intended. (a la Disney's sanitizing of Victor Hugo's political satire 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame.')
Aside from the music, my only other complaint was the BLAH message the film repeated OVER and OVER and OVER again by Ewan McGregor. Love is good, Love is Great, Life is Love, We all need Love, Life is meaningless without Love.... etc. etc. etc...
I kept expecting the film to get a little deeper, or at least try to explain why love is good... but it didn't. If you want a great love story, there are a whole bunch out there that are much better than this film.
That said, the supporting cast were entertaining... and the overall look of the film is definitely impressive if not surreal.
Overall, costumes, choreography and art direction are to be commended, writing and direction are not. Methinks it gets a marginal 5.