Am I The Only Person In The World Who Hated Moulin Rouge?

Cafe Society
21

It gave me a headache, but by God, I stuck it out. And regretted sticking it out. My husband and I wanted to try Pay-Per-View, and the couch was so very cozy that once we had paid for it, we thought we’d try it and hope that it got better. Bleh.

Leaden acting, primitive storyline, and hyperkinetic editing, all leading up to Kidman dying oh-so-prettily of tuberculosis. She coughs up, what, two wee spots of blood and manages to get through all her songs. Who knew such a horrible lung disease could look so good?

22

I hated it so much I didn’t even see the damned thing!

23

I hated the trailer, I hated the commercials, and I have no intention of ever seeing this movie and losing 2 hours of my life.

Is that good enough? :slight_smile:

24

So…is it safe to say that the same people who loved Moulin Rouge…are they the same people who thought Titanic was an extraordinary cinematic experience also?

25

I hated it too. You needed dramamine to follow the action, it was fundamentally contrived, and Nicole Kidman’s hot, but not when you try to paint her up like Queen Elizabeth I. I’ll say about this what I say about other movies I hate. It had me on the edge of my seat, but for some reason I decided to stay till the end.

26

I dunno…I didn’t really like Titanic all that much, but I still like Moulin Rouge.

I think it’s just that for me, I happen to like all the music–the singing, the hopelessly romantic theme. I find the setting very immersive, and the morality of it very thoughtful.

So it just ‘works’ with me, I guess. Reading over some of the other posters, I can very much understand the reasoning for those who didn’t like it.

27

No, it’s not in the slightest bit safe to say that MR fans are also Titanic fans, because Titanic was one of the worst pieces of dreck ever to wash up on our cinematic shore (and I freely admit that I’m basing that opinion entirely on the clips I’ve seen since if out of a seventeen and a half day long movie they couldn’t find a single clip that wasn’t utterly dreadful I feel safe in concluding the movie sucked rocks) while MR was the finest movie of the 21st Century.

I don’t understand people who don’t like MR. What’s not to like? The music, the dancing, the costumes, the ONE number that’s edited like a fever dream, the acting, everything about ti was wonderful and good. Except for the very last line of dialog, which could easily be interpreted as an ironic comment of Christian’s talent or emotional state. Like, hell, what’s not to love?

28

One of my roommates calls tuberculosis “everyone’s favorite disease.” Because it always seems to be romantized–you know, nurse a tubercular poet and die of the disease yourself.

And isn’t TB extraordinarily contagious? How come Christian didn’t start coughing blood into a hanky, after all the <ahem> intimate contact he had with her?

29

Well, I didn’t go see *Moulin Rouge[/] because I hated Luehrmann’s (sp?) Romeo + Juliet so much, and I could see the direction he was headed on the Strictly Ballroom - Romeo axis. I saw a couple of trailers and immediately could tell I’d be in for some serious displeasure, as I avsolute cannot stand the MTV-style fast cutting that’s so trendy these days. I leave the theater feeling I’ve been beaten on the eyes and ears.

30

Dang. I don’t even have the excuse that I was coding in the dark, either.

31

My mother emotionally blackmailed me into going. I’d seen all the reviews saying ‘Hey, why not go - it’s really ok!’, so thought ‘why not?’. BAD MOVE!

These people LIED. I have NEVER wanted to walk out of a movie so bad in my entire life. Even the most terrible films I’ll stay and laugh at - but this one? You could have told me it lasted five hours and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. I truly wanted to give it a chance, I adore Strictly Ballroom, but the moment the little man stood up at the beginning and started conducting, my heart sunk.

It’s just been done before, with more originality, subtlety, technique . . Nicole was consistently out-performed by her costume and make-up, you could have easily replaced her with a store manniken and no-one would’ve noticed much . . everyone but the two leads decided to employ those incredibly annoyingly farcical voices throughout . . there was more chemistry between Jim Broadbent and his stupid ginger 'tache than there was between the starcrossed lovers . . the only highlights were the choreography and set dressing, which were rendered unfollowable by the balls-up of editing, camera work and direction . . the conceit of using easily-recognisable cheesy pop songs as heart warming ballads got tired FAST (ie the first one) . . it was comPLETELY emotionally uninvolving (and I cry at disney movies) . .

I have never experienced someone being so prettily consumptive before - and how come when she’s coughed up enough blood to expansively cover poor Ewan’s blousey shoulder, Nicole only has one tiny drop of it at the corner of her mouth like she’s slightly smudged her lipstick? You have to admire her acting technique during one moment - she didn’t wince once when Ewan sprayed her copiously with spittle on hitting the high note during the last big number.

Ewan, bless him - the only redeeming feature, even if his terribly english character kept coming over all scottish in times of high emotion (ma bonny wee lassie, ah canna live without ye!!). Singing!Ewan, I thought, would be the one major sticking point for me, but he seemed to be the only performer trying to at least get a little bit emotionally involved with the script.

Bad bad BAD bad bad bad BAD movie. You know something’s wrong when you are rooting for the leading lady to just hurry up and DIE.
Sorry, I think you’ve touched a nerve there :slight_smile:

32

I found it to be extremely boring except for the Roxanne number, which was pretty darn emotionally gripping and I would say is one of the best numbers I’ve seen in a musical.

33

I adore the movie, but since this is a Moulin Rouge hatefest, I’ll keep quiet on specific bitches. It’s not for everybody. I’m just glad that my husband loves it as much, if not even more, than me. It’s nice to share something so sweet and silly and funny and romantic with someone you love. I’m a very lucky woman.

34

“It’s been done before.”

I hear this critique a lot. Please offer some examples of what’s been done before and where/when.

35

No.

I can understand why people would hate this movie. What I can’t figure out are the complaints about the how unrealistically the tuberculosis was portrayed. Do you also complain that elements in Alice In Wonderland aren’t like real life? You have a gun bouncing off the Eiffel Tower and you expect the tuberculosis to be treated realistically?

36

I hated the blasted thing too. After ten minutes of the video, I wanted to claw my eyes out. I wound up fast forwarding a lot of the music and dance scenes because they were so irritating. And I couldn’t get past the anachronisms, and…
Oh, never mind. You know the rest.

37

I’d say the exact opposite. The kind of people who loved Titanic are probably the people most likely to hate Moulin Rouge. Titanic after all was the ultimate formula movie; admittedly very well-made but devoid of anything that wasn’t a cliche. Love it of hate it, you have to admit Moulin Rouge wasn’t a typical movie.

Which I believe was its problem. There are people who want comfort in their movies and people who want novelty. The novelty crowd loved Moulin Rouge; the comfort crowd hated it. You could make a case that the most similar recent movie experience was The Blair Witch Project.

38

I hated all three movies (MR, Titanic, and Blair Witch).

39

I didn’t mind it, in terms of it being theatrical and a bit like an extended pop-video. However.

  1. The plot was wafer, wafer thing, boring and crap

  2. The singing was horrific - bar the first song (which leads me to believe it was dubbed/HEAVILY synthed) Kidman was thin and reedy throughout. McGregor was way too loud (sound ed’s fault, not his as such) and was harsh and grating on the top notes. Neither are professional singers, and it damn well showed.

  3. I fking HATE Elton John so hearing that revolting refrain of his every third minute made me want to rip the silver screen end-to-end.

  4. It was just not a great film. It was an interesting experiment, that’s all.

40

The main good points that I could see with the movie were its costuming/art direction etc; yes, it looked pretty, but I’d suggest the films of Peter Greenaway (Belly of an Architect, Zed & Two Noughts, The Cook, The Theif, His Wife and Her Lover etc), or Derek Jarman (The Tempest, Caravaggio, Jubilee), wipe the floor with MR in terms of originality, beauty, and Jarman in particular sheer jaw-dropping aesthetics. Even Ken Russell managed to create quirky, original, good-to-look-at movies on a tiny budget; Lair of the White Worm for example (worth seeing just for Amanda Donahue in thigh boots and not much else). Another film which is intensely visually appetising , plus poops all over MR’s love story in terms of passion and drama, would be La Reine Margot; beautiful, extreme, heartbreaking.

In terms of the stuff I really didn’t like (the use of dance, the singing)? Well, for a start I’d say Strictly Ballroom, by Luhrmann himself, makes the dancing into so much more a part of the movie. It doesn’t suffer the fast-cutting, the whole mess of editing. You actually get to watch the dancing properly, and it is uplifting, exhilerating. You believe in it and begin to root for the characters. It involves the viewer, which I think is where MR fails. I can see what Luhrmann was trying to do, create this visual impact that leaves you breathless and panting with all the energy and spark, but instead it leaves me squinting ferociously trying to figure out exactly what’s going on. The performances were too ‘considered’ for me to feel emotionally attatched with any of the characters, and the direction and editing just provided another barrier for me to get past.

Singing in contemporary films generally annoys me, but for whatever reason interpreting chart music annoyed me more - a movie which has utilised a song or a few songs more effectively for my taste could be Magnolia - that love-it-or-hate-it moment involving all the principal characters. Even though my brain is trying to tell me that the moment is too sentimental for words, I can’t help but go with it and find it almost unbearably touching. I even enjoy the song/dance numbers in Earth Girls Are Easy more than I did those in MR (“I like 'em big and . . . STUPID!! I like 'em big and . . . REAL DUMB”). EGAE, or John Waters movies where the singing and/or dancing doesn’t grate with me a bit, have a sense of fun which MR, try as it might, lacked for me. The ‘silly, ridiculous’ moments just seemed to strengthen the feeling that the movie didn’t seem to know exactly what it was aiming for - Romance? Drama? Farce? Figure it out, Baz, then get back to me, and try creating a scarier villian while you’re at it. It’s hard for me to believe in a movie, and make that great leap of faith to just go with it and enjoy the ride, when it appears to be revelling in multi-personality-disorder.

So yes, I thought MR looked beautiful, some of the set pieces were almost stunning. But it simply wasn’t enough of a spectacle to make up for everything I felt it lacked, and I have seen much, much prettier films which have tried harder to involve me with events onscreen.