Moulin Rouge

This week, you're getting Moulin Rouge because I'm out of town. No, I wrote this in advance because I'm away from home, staying in a Motel 6 off Interstate 25 in Colorado Springs. You see, Dipshit Suzanne once again has earned both the dip and the shit in her name. Last week she got her panties all moist watching some late-night jackass selling motivational seminars. Two days later, the $99 audiotapes showed up, and Dipshit Suzanne started spouting Carl Carlton's "Words to Win By," designed to fool jackasses into thinking the only reason they aren't already rich is not because they aren't the kinds of idiots who buy shit from late night TV. It's because they didn't know all these horseshit clichés.

"Don't get down on work, get high on life!" Dipshit Suzanne said after catching me hiding in the dumpster when I didn't want to check the "Boner High" series of gay porn tapes for tracking problems. The next day, I was late for work and she said, "If you don't like the job, let the job like you!" What the fuck does that mean?

Then two days ago my boss -- winner of the Filthy "World's Stupidest Small Business Owner" Award -- announced that instead of raises, she would be making see Carl Carlton at the World Arena in Colorado Springs. He's gonna fucking change my world, motivate me into becoming a super-efficient shelf-stocker through slogan-chanting and fire-walking exercises. And all the while, I'll be as happy as a Mormon letting a stripper remove his special underwear. Dipshit Suzanne thinks making me go through two days of sittting on my ass and going through "team-building" shit with the crack staff of lazy bastards and thieving pricks she's assembled will make First American Video the best video store in the world. This is the same Dipshit Suzanne who won't even take my simple suggestions on how to improve our store, like alphabetizing our fucking titles, taking "Meatballs I and II" out of the "classics" and letting me drink on the job.

Sorry, where were we? Oh, yeah, Moulin Rouge. Well, there sure is a lot of movie here. It's glitzier and caked with more makeup than a whore trying to impress her rich father, but it's also about as creepy and shallow. It's not a very good movie, although I have a feeling that there will be many angry teenage girls who tell me otherwise.

In turn of the century France, Ewan McGregor plays Christian, a playwright of dubious ability who gets involved with a gang of Bohemians, led by a lisping John Leguizamo as Toulouse Latrec. They want to put on a musical about love, but they need the star of the Moulin Rouge nightclub, Nicole Kidman, to make it legit and to get the financing. She's a courtesan showgirl who dreams of being a real actress, we're told rather clumsily. And in order to fund the musical, she must be sold to "The Duke," a panty-waisted villain. But, McGregor and Kidman quickly fall in love, which upsets the Duke and he wants McGregor dead. Oh yeah, the story also throws in that Kidman has tuberculosis, so that she can have a dramatic, tragic, and very convenient death.

Moulin Rouge talks about true love more than a 13-year-old girl and with about as much clarity. Just because the movie says true and pure love exists (and that's all they say, over and over like my retard cousin Larry talking about Regis Philbin's hair), that doesn't make it so. And making the actors spouting it so simple and unreal does less to prove the point than a teenager saying "Yes way." But Baz Luhrman's not interested in making McGregor and Kidman into characters we care about. They're just pretty people in a pretty movie aimed right at the suckers who already think love can be perfect and last forever and always be moonbeams and rainbows, and who also end up marrying too young, going bankrupt, owning shit from the Franklin Mint, divorcing, becoming incredibly bitter and spending 15 years terrorizing their ex-spouses with threats and minor acts of vandalism.

What the moviegoers I see need to inspire them and lift their hopes are more stories about ugly, surly people who talk too loud during movies finding love and happiness with other unpleasant, ugly fucks.

Beyond McGregor and Kidman, the cast is given nothing to do but roll their eyes, play out sub-Three's Company double entendres and mistaken identity gags. Leguizamo specializes in being unbearable, like a community-college drama student convinced that affecting lisps and tics is what wins the Oscars. Fuck, maybe it is, but it's sure as hell unpleasant and amateurish to watch. Only Jim Broadbent, as the fat owner of Moulin Rouge, is enjoyable and that's because he seems to know the movie sucks. And even he is forced to perform a "silly" song-and-dance to Madonna's "Like a Virgin" that's about as clever and fresh as 40 minutes of dry heaving. Note to Baz Luhrman: just because you wouldn't expect a certain character to sing a certain song doesn't mean it's funny when he does.

That's the whole fucking point of this "musical," to surprise us by having old-timey people sing new-timey songs like lots of Madonna schlock, Carol Channing and I'm pretty fucking sure there's some Air Supply in there. The songs aren't great, or even good, but Luhrman thinks that the shittiest pop music of the 20th century can be made relevant by having it sung by people in costume while backed by the world's loudest and most melodramatic string and horns orchestra. It makes Andrew Lloyd Weber seem like a fucking genius for dressing people up like cats and choo-choo trains.

Good God in a Gravy Boat is Moulin Rouge loud, musically and visually. Few scenes are quiet, and the ones that are have dippy music playing just to point out how quiet it should be. The orchestra sounds like they're playing each instruments as loud and hard as physically possible, screaming like a coming porn star. "Listen, listen to how fucking classy this is," they scream. Visually, the movie is overwhelming. It's going to give the eplieptics more problems than a Pokemon marathon. It's a neat trick for five minutes but for two hours it's Goddamn tiring. Besides, it's as clear as my 4 a.m. piss that Luhrman's only doing it because he can. If the overload made a point or built to something, that'd be great. It doesn't. Luhrmann has nothing to say besides, "Look at this! No, wait, look at this! No, hold on, over here! Look, midgets!"

Two Fingers for Moulin Rouge. You'd do better by blasting a Celine Dion record while watching a Howard's End with the sound off.