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Thu 24 May 2012
Moulin Rouge PDF Print E-mail
Written by Alexander Zaitchik   
Sunday, 28 December 2008 14:13

Tags: Baz Luhrmann | Ewan McGregor | Jim Broadbent | John Leguizamo | Nicole Kidman | Richard Roxburgh

Oh. Oh, my. It's a modern day... m-m-m-musical.

Moulin Rouge

As in, people singing songs that push along the story line as they jump around lamp posts and roll across pianos. Different folks, different strokes, but Oliver Stone's The Doors is about as close as this little light bulb likes to get to musicals.

All those forced attendances to sh*tty high-school performances has left me permanently averse to the genre, and I just couldn't sit through all two hours of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor singing and dancing through heavily FX'd urban dreamscapes.

Moulin Rouge! (check out the Widescreen Edition) employs old musical tropes and modern editing technique to tell the story of the legendary Paris nightclub at the turn of the century, which is pretty much a recipe for the evil b*stard child this film turned out to be.

I mean, it's really bad. The dialogue sounds like spoken Elton John lyrics and screen actions are punctuated with Tom and Jerry cartoon sound effects. The actors look like they are being paid by the word. The pace is disconcerting at best.

The only possible redemption could have lay in John Leguizamo's Toulouse-Lautrec, but the whole thing is so brash, stupid and annoying you might as well try and focus on a single ant on Bette Midler's ant farm.

Thinky says: Should the bathtub water be hot, cold or lukewarm when you slit your wrists?


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Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 January 2009 18:51
 

Our valuable member Alexander Zaitchik has been with us since Saturday, 20 December 2008.

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