Quite like nothing else I've ever seen

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2013)

I rarely see musicals and the recent Les Miserables got me thinking of seeking a lot more out. Moulin Rouge though, is a film from another canon. Right off the start it managed to be incredibly entertaining but so overwhelming. After getting used to it though, I was completely riveted with it in its first act. I found it completely giddy in its cinematic execution. Very, very theatrical and messy, but so, so much fun. It was also hilarious, and Kidman's "Naughty!" line readings had me feeling like a ray of sunshine.
But weirdly, after the first act, it keeps losing and losing steam. What exactly did it? Really, I can't be too sure with this type of film. It's not that I was overwhelmed like in the first few minutes. On the contrary, I found myself quite bored, and that's probably the least wanted intention Luhrmann had while making this. A big problem is that many of the songs just don't work. Some of them play out and I'm completely unaffected by them. The film managed to greatly recover in its final 20 minutes though, which are completely dazzling and exactly what I wanted from it.
Overall, I'm still rather mixed on this. The inventive wit, humor, and just pure adrenaline running through this is completely unique to it and there's not many films I've seen that reach its energetic levels. A lot of it didn't work though, and a big reason is because too much of it completely desensitizes you. There's definitely a lot of ambition and creativity and fun, but it's also frequently quite terrible. When it is sometimes really terrible though, it's terrible in such a fun and entertaining way that you can't help but not look away (Like a Virgin!). But other times it's not exactly terrible, just extremely boring. And yet other times, you love it to such a high degree that you get caught up in all of it. So again, what exactly do I think of it as a whole? It's a mess, a sometimes beautiful, sometimes badly funny, sometimes just dull mess. That's basically it, and because of that I have to be completely in the middle on it. Once again, that's probably the least desired intention Luhrmann had in mind when making it.