Kevin
Thomas of the Los Angeles Times
Hey whore,
how's the whoring?
The Animal is "An Outrageous Summer
Comedy!"
In Angel Eyes
, "Jennifer Lopez is Dazzling!"
Pearl Harbor is "Passion, valor and tremendous
action. Bay and Bruckheimer have given us a Pearl Harbor
to remember."
right, Kevin, the
real Pearl Harbor was so easy to forget. Thank God the movie
will keep us from forgetting.
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©2001 by
Randy Shandis Enterprises. All rights fucking reserved.
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This week:
Moulin Rouge
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Filthy says:
"What the Fuck?" |
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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.
Want
to tell Filthy something?
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