where's the love?

Rating: 6/10 (10 June 2001)

I went into the theater prepared to love Moulin Rounge, as I had been terribly impressed with Luhrman's last roller coaster, Romeo + Juliet. However, there the visual pyrotechnics had been at the disposal of the greatest love story ever told; the plot here is, well, NOT the greatest love story ever told. The whole things starts off too silly to take seriously, Satine falls for Christian merely because the script requires it (who wouldn't fall in love with Nicole Kidman?), and the fact the story is being told in flashback destroys all tension as to what will happen. McGregor and Kidman are fine both as actors and singers, but the words spewing out of their mouths are such a bewildering purree of pop culture references the mind can't process everything.
I recommend the film for Luhrman's dazzling visuals and the fine work by the actors (particularly Jim Broadbent, who should get an Oscar nomination), but the writing keeps it from being as good as it could have been. My rating is a 6 (actually, it's close to a 7 but since it is averaging over 8 I feel I need to knock it down a notch).