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Description: A spectacle beyond anything you've ever witnessed. An experience beyond everything you've ever imagined. Behind the red velvet curtain, the ultimate seduction of your senses is about to begin. Welcome to the Moulin Rouge! Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor sing, dance and scale the heights of passionate abandon in the year's most talked-about movie from visionary director Baz Luhrmann (William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Strictly Ballroom). Enter a tantalizing world that celebrates truth, beauty, freedom and above all things, love.

Editorial essential video: A dazzling and yet frequently maddening bid to bring the movie musical kicking and screaming into the 21st century, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge bears no relation to the many previous films set in the famous Parisian nightclub. This may appear to be Paris in the 1890s, with can-can dancers, bohemian denizens like Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), and ribaldry at every turn, but it's really Luhrmann's pop-cultural wonderland. Everyone and everything is encouraged to shatter boundaries of time and texture, colliding and careening in a fast-cutting frenzy that thinks nothing of casting Elton John's "Your Song" 80 years before its time. Nothing is original in this kaleidoscopic, absinthe-inspired love tragedy--the words, the music, it's all been heard before. But when filtered through Luhrmann's love for pop songs and timeless showmanship, you're reminded of the cinema's power to renew itself while paying homage to its past.

Luhrmann's overall success with his third "red-curtain" extravaganza (following Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet) is wildly debatable: the scenario is simple to the point of silliness, and how can you appreciate choreography when it's been diced into hash by attention-deficit editing? Still, there's something genuine brewing between costars Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman (as, respectively, a poor writer and his unobtainable object of desire), and their vocal talents are impressive enough to match Luhrmann's orgy of extraordinary sets, costumes, and digital wizardry. The movie's novelty may wear thin, along with its shallow indulgence of a marketable soundtrack, but Luhrmann's inventiveness yields moments that border on ecstasy, when sound and vision point the way to a moribund genre's joyously welcomed revival. --Jeff Shannon

Rating: 5

Date: 2010-01-10

Summary: You'll love it or you'll hate it... but you shouldn't miss it

Content: I was fortunate to see this in the theaters, or I may never have stuck with it long enough to find out how amazing the story and the movie are. If you have not seen this one, I recommend you try it. And if you do, make sure to watch for more than the first 20 minutes... when I first saw it, the beginning seemed so frantic and the pace was so quick, I thought it was little more than a quirky music video. I was ready to walk out. But if you stay with it until the "poetry reading" scene, you'll probably be hooked by the story and the humor of it! This is definitely one of those movies that was made boldly, and people either love or hate it - very few shrug their shoulders and say "It was okay." I think it's one of the great stories/movies of the past decade. The film makes VERY unusual use of music and lyrics, and the result gives the love story an emotional impact far beyond most other great movie love stories. And the dazzling visual style "wows me" over and over. Often, being aware of a "visual style" in a movie is a sign that a director is more interested in impressing us with his/her clever movie-making than in telling a compelling story. If a "dazzling" visual style of a film distracts me from the story, I will dislike the visual style for interfering. But in the case of Moulin Rouge, I found the style and the visual elements added very significantly to the emotional impact of the story. It's one of the best and boldest movies I have seen in recent years, and one of the very few that I find myself re-watching every year or two.

Rating: 3

Date: 2010-01-04

Summary: Another excellent performance by Obi Wan Kenobi!!

Content: Nicole Kidman dies at the end!!!! Anyway...the movie is just about a bunch of whores doing this and that. I've never seen a whore house where the whores look clean and sing all the time. Whores. Obi Wan definitely delivers an Oscar winning performance. Everyone else was horrific compared to him however. Actually, he's the only reason to see this movie. He's the man. Just watch Star Wars or Black Hawk down for proof. If you like whores, you should probably invest your time and money into an actual whore instead of this movie. If you like musicals...Go watch a West Side story. There about the same this except in that movie you get more bang for your buck because more people die in the end. Thankyou for your time.

Rating: 5

Date: 2009-11-26

Summary: Great Movie

Content: Great perfomance by Nicole Kidman and what an amazing blend of vocals with Ewan McGregor! If you like good musicals, this is a must-have! The beginning seems really out-there, but stick with it and it'll all come together.

Rating: 1

Date: 2009-11-17

Summary: Worst Musical Movie Ever

Content: The movie was so long and drawn out with nothing but songs. Even the first fifteen minutes had nothing but musicals. My entire family had to shut this movie off and return it for a full refund at our local rental store it was so bad. If you have a taste for cheesy musicals with a bad story line then this just might be your movie. The movie felt like it was so drawn out even in the first fifteen minutes of watching it! I would say this was the worst musical movie ever!

Rating: 5

Date: 2009-11-14

Summary: Emotional

Content: Pulls, Tugs and Dances with all of your emotions from happy-dance feelings, excitement, and explicit appearance of the insinuation of sexual desire in all of its wonderful forms without crudity--laughter and the finality of deep heart wrenching grief that the audience experiences. This movie moves you up and down the emotional scale. Absolutely amazing music and dancing! Loved it even though I was exhausted after each time I saw it. Think I've seen it 4 or 5 times.