The Critics Vs. Moulin Rouge!
Submitted by dgeiser13 on Thu, 02/07/2002 - 06:05
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Glimpse Of The Future ~ "In an age when movie musicals are mostly children's cartoons, Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" brilliantly reinvents the genre and opens the door to a new cinematic style. So why didn't the critics get it?" (Salon.com)
Funny, I just looked up Sleepy Hollow at Rotten Tomatoes for another post, and discovered that it has the exact same approval rating as Moulin Rouge. At 71%, they were both better received than I thought (although not as well received as deserved).
Of course, I think MR! has at least a 90% approval rating here, demonstrating once again what good taste we all have. :-)
The critics didn't get it because, frankly, film critics today rarely get anything truly new or experimental. If you make a great film that resembles the great films of the 70s, you will get praised. If you make a great film that looks like little of what came before, you will be blasted. Moulin Rouge was entirely too much for the old-school critics to deal with.
This is, of course, entirely too general; there are a few, though few, good film critics working today, but I fear if I were to count them, I wouldn't use up all my fingers...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Sir Bangs, which critics in particular do you like?