9 out of 10
 

With all the wizardry that hi-tech can provide, and 59 hit songs (listed on the end credits), 20th Century Fox brings to life an almost forgotten art form, the musical, and one that can rival any marvel that Buzby Berkeley ever produced.

Set in Paris in 1899, it is a tale of a young Englishman, played "boy-next-door" by Ewan MacGregor, who comes to the Montmatre ghetto to experience the Bohemian revolution. Despite the artists for its proponents, proclaiming a credo of "Truth, Beauty and Love", he becomes quickly drawn into the sleazy world of the "Moulin Rouge", a notorious night club, and here falls in love with the doomed dancer and prostitute, "Satine" (Nicole Kidman), a dancer who in real life used to wear out a new pair of red leather boots EVERY NIGHT on stage.

The sheer audacity with which Rock & Roll classics (e.g. "Like a Virgin" and "Roxanne" by the Police) are dropped into the screenplay to be performed as they might have been in the nineteenth century is truly breathtaking, yet it all works, and wonderfully too, not least with the magnificent Jim Broadbent excelling as Harold Ziedler, the club’s owner.