five thousand shades of blue
Thursday, August 02, 2001
Thoughts on Moulin Rouge...
I was dragged to the bargain dollar showing of
Moulin Rouge last night. Boy, did that movie suck all sorts of ways from Sunday. What were they thinking? My first reaction was: At least it was only a dollar to get in. My second reaction was: This movie personifies everything I hate about musicals.
I will say that it started out well enough: , loud, bright and shiny, farcical and moving fastfastfast, I was with it until just about . After that, it felt to me like it started to take itself
way too seriously.
I thought the usage of modern music was distracting, as if breaking out into song and dance wasn't distracting enough (which is the main reasons I don't like musicals as a rule). The problem with using well-known (modern or not) music is that a song like "Roxanne" already comes with its own series of personal associations for me, so instead of pulling me into the illusion like a good musical number should, it instead completely shatters it. This could be why some people love this movie: they don't know the music as well. Case in point: Andra, who also disliked the movie, said that she
did love the one of the "original" numbers, "Lady Marmalade". I had to inform her that that wasn't original; it was an old disco song retooled, because I remember snickering at the French portion of the lyrics as a teen. I had the associations and found the production amusing as I rolled my eyes; she didn't and felt completely different. Most of the time, the modern lyrics just had me embarrassed and cringing in my seat, hoping and praying it would be over soon. (You know, I'm quite positive that Kurt Cobain is either spinning in his grave or laughing his ass off at the use of a snippet of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". I can't decide which.)
I'm sure there was some point to using familiar, modern music, perhaps much like setting Shakespeare in modern times (like the most recent film production of
Romeo and Juliet) so that younger people can feel some connection to it.
Moulin Rouge is no such classic, and it may be just me, but I think if one's going to make a musical, one ought to invest one's time in creating original musical numbers! :)
That's not to say I didn't find some of the numbers entertaining and sometimes, like in the case of "Like a Virgin" (and "Roxanne", which I'm sure was
not their intention), absolutely hilarious, but only in the sense of a self-contained music video universe. The music that I didn't recognize, and which I presume to be original, I did like a great deal. Seperately, some of the bits worked, but in all, it hung together badly.
I got a general sense of where this movie wanted to go, but it felt to me like they couldn't decide how they wanted to get there. We proclaimed this movie to be either manic-depressive or bi-polar. And regardless of the very nice eye candy, it definitely sucked.
is
this just not enough…?
