Look, Ma! I'm wearing a feather boa!!

Rating: 1/10 (12 February 2002)

I got this movie on DVD for Christmas from my older brother Paul, who basically doesn't understand me and never will. He more or less told me: 'I saw this with my girlfriend and we both agreed it was kinetic, it was energetic, it was musical and superficial. We immediately thought of you' After seeing this atrocity, I have to seriously reconsider the image I project to my somewhat conservative family. "Moulin Rouge!" is the kind of film that makes you really consider with a jaundiced eye the sorry state of contemporary mass culture with desperate questions like 'Have we sunk so low?', 'Can we possibly survive?' and 'Don't we all deserve to die from shame for having had anything to do with the kind of society that can produce such a film and call it art?' I know it was produced by Australians and we should all cut them some slack for their relative lack of sophistication. I know Ms. Kidman gives a truly surprising performance as a dancer-singer (I thought she had no other talent than a certain ability to manipulate the media, which she shared with or possibly learned from her husband Tom Cruise) and I know it is probably supposed not to be taken at face value. But I can't forgive its pompousness, its grandiosity, its masquerading as something important while being such a patchwork of second-hand elements. It is supposed to infuse the viewer with the charm and cultural significance of turn-of-the-century Paris while paying homage to every French romantic creation from 'The Lady of the camelias' and 'Scènes de la vie de bohème' onward. Yet, the only spoken French words in the whole show are 'Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?' from the Patti Labelle 'Lady Marmalade' song, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Paris, Romanticism or French culture. The plot is a distillation of every melodrama ever written down to its bare bones: Poor poet loves girl; girl belongs to rich man; girl spits out her lungs. And this is supposed to be funny? It's anachronistic, turgid, necrophiliac and excessive. It's a movie for people who think synchronized swimming is a life-affirming art. It's what Ren said to Stimpy about cartoons: 'They're only puppets and they'll rot your brains!' It's supposed to make you want to get up and dance. It only made me wish I knew someone intellectually-challenged enough to accept this DVD as a worthwhile gift. The truth about this movie is that it's one big monumental camp that was conceived for people who have no grasp of history, of the world they live in, of their own identity, of their own cultural heritage and who like dressing up in mother's mesh stockings and inventing stories in front of the mirror when there's no one around. It's really meant to bring out the secret drag queen in every viewer. Trouble is I never nurtured my inner drag queen. And I can only see this movie for what it really is: a desperate attempt at meaning from feeble minds and, now that Oscar time is approaching, a desperate grasp for Academy members' attention and the supplementary mazzoola that Oscar's prestige can still confer on this undercooked, overripe tripe.
"Moulin Rouge!" - the exclamation point is meant to express revulsion - is to movie musicals what "Family Guy" is to TV sitcoms: a cheap gimmick for retards, a cheat and an easy way out.