Moulin Rouge

So one of the things I really like about online critiques of movies is the vast amount of opinions different people can have on a movie. Some people may love a film, while others can't stand it. And with this site, I get to give my opinion.

Probably one of the movies reviewed by others with the widest range of opinions that I've seen is that of the 2001 movie musical, Moulin Rouge. Some people loved it and thought it was creative genius. While others have since said that it was overblown for its time and didn't deserve all the attention its gotten.

Also since it was what I decided to watch on HBO tonight, I'll give my thoughts on it to fit into that trend of people giving their thoughts on this movie.

To give a little bit of background on my experience with this movie, as it is not the first time I've seen it. I had friends at a very young age that were obsessed with this film. I did theater in middle school and high school and due to that, I hung out with a very different crowd. Great people no doubt. But I got introduced to a lot of different forms of art and media that I hadn't been into before. This is about the same time, if not before, I was dating the girl that made me love Rent. Everyone seemed to be into the pure "bohemian" lifestyle of "art" and "expressionism" and yada, yada, yada. So I had A LOT of people who would die before letting anybody say anything bad about this movie...

Well I don't see those people anymore so I think its safe to say I think this movie is a little bit overrated.

The movie centers on a young writer by the name of Christian (played by Ewan McGregor. He begins telling the story about love.

And that is a common theme of the movie: love. The thing is, its not really saying anything about love besides love is awesome. Love can be difficult. But love is awesome.

And yeah, the Nate King Cole lyric "The Greatest thing you will ever know is to love and be loved in return" is a pretty slogan and its definitely a great way to appeal to the romantics out there. Its not exactly substantive.

Anyway, Christian is telling his story about love, as he arrives in Paris to be a Bohemian writer. He quickly joins a troop of other Bohemians and agrees to write their play "Spectacular Spectacular". What is "Spectacular, Spectacular"? To be honest, I'm not totally sure. They kind of throw that title out pretty quickly so its not exactly important for you to know the title of the play... anyways...

Through a mixing of identities, Christian meets the courtesan Satine (played by Nicole Kidman) and they fall in love... really out of no where.

I mean, yeah, try not falling in love with Ewan McGregor after this song...

I mean, its Obi-Wan Kenobi singing Elton John, who wouldn't fall in love with that instantly?

But in all seriousness, they fall in love faster than most Disney cartoon couples do.

However, Satine was suppose to be meeting with a Duke (played by Richard Roxbourgh) as it was set up by her boss (basically her pimp) Harold Zidler (played by Jim Broadbent), believes that Christian is the Duke. And when it revealed he is not and the Duke finally appears, they need to improvise and sell to the Duke the exact same plot of the movie in the form of a play so that he will invest and help the bordello turn into a theater.

Its a story of hidden romance all decorated with a jukebox musical with a wide variety of songs.

And that's the first thing to talk about when it comes to this movie.

If you read my Rock of Ages review, you'll know that one of the biggest problems with that movie musical was the fact that it was trying so hard to base the story off of the music. The dialogue in most scenes were so atrocious because they were trying really, really hard to tie in classic rock songs.

Moulin Rouge on the other hand probably wrote the story and picked out songs that would work for the story. It basically did the opposite of Rock of Ages, it probably based the music off the story, and not the other way around.

And they do this well, almost to the point where the music seems a little bit random at certain points. I'll give Rock of Ages all the shit I want, but at least they stuck with a genre of music. I'll fall asleep all I want to Across the Universe but at least all those song have a theme in the Beatles. Moulin Rouge was really kind of pulling songs out of their ass, from Elton John, to Madonna, to Nirvana, and Whitney Houston. So yeah, it was a little bit confusing.

That being said, for the most part, I really love the music in this movie. The version of Your Song, sung by Ewan McGregor, I think sometimes is better than Elton John's original. El Tango De Roxanne is really one of the best choreographed and performed songs in the show. Its one of the shows you can go back and watch just for the music.

So yeah, while I'm not gonna say its the best soundtrack as it does have a couple songs I think it could have done without, the majority of the songs are really good and generally all of them are at least well performed.

Unfortunately, the movie falls into the same traps that a lot of movie musicals fall into that they're maybe one or two songs too long and the movie starts to drag at a certain point. I've been looking at different musicals when that happens and what changes and I think its the fact that the majority of musicals like this and Rent start out happier in the first act and as the second act goes on, that's where more of the drama comes in, the sets get darker, and it becomes just dreary. Now that wouldn't be that big of a deal if it wasn't complimented by dark music. And if dark sets and dialogue doesn't bring you down, dark music definitely does that.

Moving on from the music, the next thing worth talking about is the cast. Having watched this movie a couple of times, I realize that it is a really talented cast, both acting wise and musical wise.

I mean if you said today that there was a musical with Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, and Jim Broadbent, I think anybody who's seen a good number of movies would know most of those actors and be excited about it. And those three are probably the best in the show. You can make a case for John Leguizamo and the guy who plays the Narcoleptic Argentinian (Jacek Koman), but the very name of that character should tell you what the writing is like for this movie. You've got a character who's only name is The Narcoleptic Argentinian. Even though he sings one of the best songs in the show, he's not that developed. And even the heavy hitters don't have the greatest dialogue. But its a Baz Luhrmann movie. The guy has a little bit more background in visuals and cinematography that determining if the dialogue and story are really that great (another reason I'm really interested in eventually seeing and reviewing The Great Gatsby).

 The truth is, the only people really worth talking about, (outside of The Duke, who I will get to) are Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor.

Now I'm a little bit bias when it comes to McGregor because his performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi was my childhood, the man can do no wrong in my book.

Being as objective as I can, McGregor does a good job at playing the dopey dreamer who only wants to write about love. Again, he's not figuring out what love is, he's not figuring out what it means to be in love, he just thinks its pretty neat.

The guy is a phenomenal singer and I'm incredibly excited to see him play Lumiere in the Beauty and the Beast reboot coming out in a couple years.

I'd say the biggest problems with Mcgregor's performance are due to bad writing. Christian is your "tortured artist" and some of the decisions he makes are kind of dumb in the end.

Nicole Kidman on the other hand... well...

I'll try and give Kidman as much slack as I gave McGregor because lets be honest, the script was not that great. I think she did alright with what she was given, and yeah, she's a talented actress.

But where McGregor really played up the obnoxious "Tortured artist" cliche in this film, Kidman really plays up the obnoxiousness factor.

She has moments where her voice reaches a register that I think only dogs can reach. And yeah, her character does some pretty stupid stuff near the end.

Basically, I think I can conclude that the way this movie ended was really not as well done as it could have been and that might be why people have differing opinions on it.

That being said, I'm not totally sure why Kidman got an Oscar Nomination for this role. Now that I'm looking at it, 2001's Oscars weren't that stellar of a year anyway, but I digress.

And then you've got Richard Roxbourgh...

And dear god... this guy is bad.

I mean this is a note for everyone involved in the film, I can honestly say nobody phones in their performance in this film. Everyone is into it and they sell it. I don't think the movie would have been successful if everybody wasn't in it, regardless of if its actually good or not.

But Roxbourgh is an example of someone maybe getting too into it. And yeah, again, a little bit of it has to do with the writing. His character is an idiot. But he's also one of the most 2 dimensional villains I've seen in a long time. And I mean, he's got the twisty mustache and everything!

But overall, the movie is a little bit ridiculous. Its not just Roxbourgh, its really the ensemble and set up in general.

Regardless of your thoughts on the movie, you have to admit the movie is different and odd. Whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to your personal preference.

If you enjoy adaptations of popular songs, you will probably enjoy the juke box musicalness of this movie. There's definitely good things about this movie.

I personally just think its a little bit overrated and didn't really warrant all the nominations it was set up for. Now, the movie didn't win a lot of the awards that it was nominated for so that makes things a little bit different.

I've heard people call this movie a guilty pleasure movie because while people sometimes realize the bad parts of the movie, they still enjoy it for one reason or another. Whether that's you or not, that's up to you.

But those are my thoughts on Moulin Rouge. What do you think? Comment and discuss below! You can also give me your thoughts by following me and sending me them on Twitter @cmhaugen24. There you can send me your thoughts and requests for future reviews. you can also get updates for future movie news and reviews that come out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. Trailers from the 90's and early 2000's were weird... here's the trailer for Moulin Rouge. Enjoy!