Moulin Rouge MPAA Rating: PG-13 Entertainment: +2 1/2 Content: -1 1/2

It's 1899 and Christian (Ewan McGregor), an idealisitc, young poet, rents a seedy hotel room in Paris, overlooking the famous Moulin Rouge nightclub. His neighbors include Toulouse-Lautrec, the diminutive, deformed French painter, and an assorted group of colorful Bohemian performers trying to put together a musical production for the Moulin Rouge. Christian is enlisted to help write the show and to convince the beautiful Satine (Nicole Kidman), show-stopping performer and courtesan, to star in their musical. Naive Christian and life-hardened Satine fall madly in love, and their love story is part tragedy like the opera "La Boheme," part musical comedy and full-time melodramatic corny. Christian bursts into song with "the hill are alive with music" in his first scene with his new neighbors, and other songs seem to spoof Barry Manilow type ballads. But the most distinctive ingredient of MOULIN ROUGE, and annoying for the over-40 set, is the "in-your-face" kaliedoscopic visual effects that assault the senses, along with loud music that drowns out much of the dialogue. However, teenagers and young adults will most likely embrace this new-style musical.

The bawdy, gaudy lifestyle of Moulin Rouge patrons, and performers, includes heavy drinking, drugs, and promiscuous sex. The showgirls in revealing costumes invite ogling male customers to join them afterwards. Satine's theme song is "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," making clear the way to her heart is through expensive gifts. In her first meeting with Christian, she mistakenly thinks he's a wealthy duke wanting sex, which makes his innocent remarks about appearing in the production seem very suggestive. While there is no on-screen sex, a sensuous tango, sexual dialogue and awkward advances in private quarters are quite suggestive. However, the continuous, quick-changing images blur much of the bawdy action. Satine unselfishly agrees to submit sexually to a wealthy duke who has been seduced into financing the apartment musical production if he can "have" her. Even with no foul language and no significant violence, MOULIN ROUGE cannot be recommended because of the immoral lifestyles treated neutrally (which implies acceptance of the immorality). Christian does conclude, however, that in spite of a broken heart, love is the most important part of life.

Preview Reviewer: Mary Draughon
Distributor: 20th Century Fox, 10201 West Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035