QUICK THOUGHTS: I watched Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! for the first time back in June 2008 and I fell instantly in love with it. However, I never forked over the money to buy it even though I had it on my Amazon wishlist for the past two years. The reason? I wanted it on Blu-ray. It’s a movie made for high-definition and I imagined it was only a matter of time before Fox gave it its due. And they have.
Filled with spectacular colors, music, costumes, performances and set design, Fox Home Entertainment has scored a winner with this latest restored version of Moulin Rouge! supervised by Luhrmann and including a few new bonus features to boot.
I’ve been asked a few times why I like this film so much and it has to do with the visual elements married with the music and playful performances. It’s a bubble gum romance to be sure, but the fun the characters are having mixed with the dramatic elements of lovers kept apart is simply something I found highly entertaining and still do on repeated viewings. After putting the Blu-ray in my first instinct was to listen closely to the new DTS-HD master audio track and pay close attention to the visual elements, but it wasn’t long before I was simply watching the movie, intoxicated by its outlandish characters and energy. I simply love it and just as I expected it benefits greatly from its high-definition transfer.
SUPPLEMENTS: Considering I never owned the previously release DVD, all of the features on this disc are new to me, but it’s quite obvious what’s new and what’s ported over from the previous DVD editions. As for what’s new, Luhrmann offers a short two-minute introduction to the Blu-ray and there’s an 11-minute featurette called “A Creative Adventure” in which Luhrmann and his production designer Catherine Martin discuss the film and their meeting.
Additionally, created specifically for this Blu-ray, Fox has merged the two previous audio commentaries into one as Luhrmann, Martin, director of photography Donald M. McAlpine and co-writer Craig Pearce are now made to seem as if they are chatting the movie in a roundtable format. This can be listened to on its own or alongside the “Spectacular, Spectacular” picture-in-picture feature length feature that includes pop-up moments of behind-the-scenes footage, artwork, storyboards, interviews, etc. as well as the occasional icon that will pop-up showing you tie-in featurettes from the “Bazmark Vault” which can also be accessed separately through the menu system.
Beyond that, it seems most everything has been carried over from the previous two-disc edition including the nearly 30 minute making of featurette as well as several shorter featurettes having to do with the actors, writers, designers, choreography, music and so forth. Plus deleted scenes, an alternate opening and Kidman’s first vocal test. Suffice to say, this thing is packed.
FINAL THOUGHTS: I love it. Strip away all of the special features and give me this restored version of the film alone and I would say it’s worth buying to the point the special features are just icing on the cake. Of course, I know this seems to be a polarizing film with many either loving it or hating it, and perhaps a few in the middle not sure where to fall — that’s understandable. So if you haven’t seen it, add it to your Netflix queue and if it’s to your liking I would suspect you too will be adding it to your collection. Otherwise you may raise an eyebrow and ask me what the hell am I thinking… Either way, my opinion remains, this is a must own if you ask me and since you’re reading this I suspect you are.
