The one person who did not like this movie (besides the academy)...

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2002)

Moulin Rouge is not a complete waste of time, although I will say that the trite and overdone nature of the film does wear thin *very* early on. Being not only a fan of the time period, but also of modern retellings of classic stories, I also enjoy hyperkinetic movies with anachronisms and juxtaposition of film elements. I assumed that this would be a perfect movie for me to see. I was very wrong...
What I saw was nothing more than eye candy, with the lack of any original plot, and a genuinely poor acting job from many veteran actors. Could this be why the Oscars it won were on technical merit, and not for any *real* movie essentials?
This movie was more of an annoyance than anything else, as I actually found myself feeling like someone was playing a sustained chorus of nails down the chalkboard. I am physically disturbed that any viewer of this film could find anything redeeming other than the aforementioned technical merit in musical score, choreography, and sound.
And speaking of musical score, Why take good songs and then ruin them by taking them out of context and re-scoring them to fit the bill? I found the songs more boring than the originals. We should have expected this sort of ripoff from the same director that brought you Romeo + Juliet. It isn't creative- it's pedantic!
It isn't that I don't get it. I completely see the point, but it gets so lost in the frenetic nonsense of slapsticky hallucinogenic action.
Moulin Rouge: a genuinely good idea gone horribly awry.