Moulin Rouge

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A landmark musical movie -- controversial, mercurial, even cheeky. It's the kind of film that wildly divides audiences and critics -- people tend to either love or hate it. I loved it.

Newsweek David Ansen

Luhrmann has raised the level of his game, deconstructing the Hollywood musical -- a genre all but left for dead -- and reassembling it with a potency that hasn’t been seen since “Cabaret.”

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's a wonderful postmodern hug of a movie, and never once do you not know you're watching a movie.

New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf

This thing moves brilliantly, sparkling like nothing we've seen domestically since "The Wiz" or "Xanadu."

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A crazed, lovestruck, wholly original (and yet amazingly referential) beast, part pop-culture wasteland, part glowing tribute, and part wild-eyed roller coaster (of love).

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

An audacious, snappy visual and emotional feast of dishes both familiar and fresh. It's the first really good movie of 2001.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is all color and music, sound and motion, kinetic energy, broad strokes, operatic excess.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A tour de force of artifice, a dazzling pastiche of musical and visual elements at the service of a blatantly artificial story.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's a mishmash of decoration, drapery and debauchery that's both deeply pleasurable and kitschy.

Time Richard Corliss

The film dances; the heart sings.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

What ultimately comes through is an undeniably imaginative work that is a glorious testament to the limitless and largely untapped possibilities of cinema.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

A sometimes glorious, sometimes disastrous folly.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Some will find it exhilarating fun.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A movie so cheeky, aggressive and bursting with vitality that it can't help being annoying and exhilarating at the same time.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's impossible to watch this beautifully chaotic, excessive movie impassively. You'll either embrace what Luhrmann has done here or run out of the theater, holding your head.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

You get faux feelings -- but faux of the highest, giddiest order.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

You can go with it or resist it, be exhilarated or worn out. But forgetting the experience is not one of your options.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The grand becomes grandiose and the lyrical turns bombastic.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A movie you can't readily get out of your head.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

McGregor, the movie's most engaging performer, is convincing enough to sell the mutual attraction. The "Trainspotting" star is usually playing some kind of freak, and this is a nice stretch for him.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It doesn't, as they say, really work -- but it's enjoyable enough in spots to leave one feeling passably entertained.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The result is a musical that substitutes irony for pop passion, misanthropic disjointedness for lyrical flow.

Film.com Peter Brunette

Consistently runs the danger of substituting cool but ultra-hyper, modern special effects for boring old human sentiment.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

It's the kind of flourish that makes you smile -- that makes you believe in the power of movies.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Simultaneously stirring and dispiriting.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Diverting, energetic, and even reasonably satisfying, so long as you aren't looking for a real musical to take its place.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Never boring, often excruciating and occasionally transcendent.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It wants to be like no other movie you've ever seen. It's more like every movie you've ever seen.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Drowns in baroque mise en scène camp, frenetic musical numbers and a precious dialogue conceit that wears out its welcome very fast.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The film musical is at the moment an even more devitalized art form than the Broadway musical. But Moulin Rouge doesn't revive it. It only rearranges the bones.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It's like being trapped inside a fever dream of Oscar-night production numbers.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A voracious vacuum cleaner of a movie --hoovering up a hundred years' worth of junk with the same monotonously unmodulated hum.

USA Today Mike Clark

May be a spectacularly awful movie, but it's also spectacularly drenched in color, décor and other visual oh-la-la.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The picture brims over with ideas - good ones, silly ones, maudlin ones, witty ones, absurd ones - and they bump up against each other like ingredients in a vast stewpot that never comes to a continuous boil.

Slate David Edelstein

Ends up leaving you starved for a single moment of unhyped emotion. You can barely see the characters for Luhrmann screaming.