Flashy but ultimately empty

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2001)

Like "A Knight's Tale" before it, "Moulin Rouge" uses anachronistic music to tell its story. "Unlike A Knight's Tale", however, "Moulin Rouge" actually makes it work from time to time, but it's not enough to save the movie.
Set at the famous nightclub in 1899 Paris, "Moulin Rouge" tells the story of the love between Christian (Ewan McGregor), a young, idealistic writer, and Satine (Nicole Kidman), a dancer who is also the most sought after courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. Also on hand are artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), Zidler (Jim Broadbent), owner of the Moulin Rouge; and the Duke of Monroth (Richard Roxburgh), who is besotted with Satine.
Director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann has created a pretty but uneven movie. The costumes and sets were eye-popping; I only wish he'd decided not to use a Roto-Tiller to edit the movie. Was there a reason why Luhrmann couldn't focus on a dancer for more than one or two seconds? The first half-hour was particularly tough to sit through, all sound and fury with little cohesion. The pacing is problematic, too: after rushing at breakneck speed through the first two acts, the movie lurches from plot point to plot point in the film's final third. The ending felt both rushed and static: the final scenes involving Christian and Satine were slow to the point of being inert, but everything else was hectic and jittery. It felt as if they'd run out of time and couldn't decide how to end it.
There was a remarkable lack of chemistry between Kidman and McGregor, or for that matter, anyone else. For all of the gape-mouthed guffawing and rivers of tears the movie shows, it just felt icy to me. I just flat didn't care because the movie's central relationship left me so unmoved. McGregor seemed earnest enough in his role, while Kidman's doomed, consumptive Satine was beautiful but just too remote for me to warm up to her. (She also suffers from "Ali MaGraw in Love Story" disease -- the sicker she gets, the more beautifully lit she gets. But boy, she sings and dances as well as any healthy person.)
Oh, and if anyone can tell me what purpose Toulouse-Lautrec served in this movie -- aside from rattling on about "the Bohemian ideal"-- I'd sure like to hear it. Plus, it would have been nice to see more than two minutes of "Spectacular, Spectacular"--they spent almost the entire movie building it up, yet we're shown virtually none of it.
Luhrmann also repeats some shots ad nauseam: the pull-way-back, pan-left, zoom-way-in sequence, for example. I lost count of the number of times Luhrmann pulled that trick or its variations. And what was with the annoying sound effects scattered throughout the movie? If I see a dancer executing several quick jetÃ©s, I know he's performing a series of leaps; I don't need to hear "doink-doink-doink" on top of it. It just took me right out of the moment.
Luhrmann's musical choices are hit-or-miss, as well: some are genuinely cringe-inducing ("Your Song" and especially "Like a Virgin" -- ugh!), while two are beautiful to the point of transcendence ("Roxanne", "The Show Must Go On"). The stars' singing voices are pretty but bland, especially McGregor's and Kidman's. I ho-hummed through their duets. Jacek Koman's Unconscious Argentinian, however, possesses a wonderfully rough, passionate voice that brought the pain and misery of "Roxanne" to wonderful, delirious fruition.
So, to sum up this too-long review: "Moulin Rouge"could have been so much more than it was, but Baz Luhrmann just couldn't pull it off. And that's a shame. My grade: C
-terry-