Moulin Rouge (2001)

REVIEW
Audacious, energetic and off-the-wall, Moulin Rouge moves at the speed of sound as it nearly reinvents the movie musical with bursts of color, frenetic pacing and a whole new way to look at musical scoring. Director Luhrmann, whose William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet was a great combination of sight and sound, tops himself visually as this story of the quest for "truth, beauty, freedom, but above all things, love," is often stunning to behold. Incorporating contemporary songs (from Madonna to the Police to The Sound of Music) into a Paris at the turn of the century is a risky undertaking, but it works thanks to some fancy editing and an assault of the senses. Displaying a fine voice and soulful looks, McGregor plays a naïve writer who falls for the most beautiful courtesan (Kidman) at the Moulin Rouge. She would like to return his love, but she's promised to another. Thus begins this Orphean descent into heartbreak and tragedy -- complete with dizzying musical numbers (imagine Cabaret reinterpreted by Timothy Leary), lush costumes and sets, and nods to opera, Comédie-Française and Bollywood. Like the can-can that the dancers perform in an opening number, Moulin Rouge revels in its own extravagance and offers a defiant thumb to convention -- it's a real kick in the pantaloons.