JEB and Fred were easy to find as you could hear their snores echoing down the river with an eerie rumble. I wandered over to where they lay, sprawled out like they had been shot and left for dead.

Picking up a long stick, I gave JEB a few pokes, keeping out of reach as he is one of the most unpleasant creatures on the planet to be around when he first wakes up. He jumped up, swinging and flailing about and backpedaled across the beach where he tripped over Fred who promptly jumped up and bit him on the leg.

I sat down on a log and watched the to of them go at it tooth and fist, enjoying the death match immensely. They finally both woke up enough to realize who their adversary was and, both growling like a couple of bears, backed away from each other.

“Saddle up, you two, we need to get out of here.”

The realization of where we were came upon JEB and he clutched his belly and started moaning . I headed for the Ebola as he scrambled to pick up his bedroll and fishing gear.

“YOU WAIT!!!!! Why I’ll put a hole in you if you don’t wait for me, damn you!”

I turned around just as he was trying to untangle his rifle from the bedroll. He was flailing around so much, he got wound up in a blanket and spinning like a Fantasia ballerina, he tumbled ass over applecart over a big log.

He jumped up with a rebel yell and the gun went of, firing straight up in the air giving a dead branch in the tree over him, just enough help to come plummeting to the ground, first making a stop on top of JEB’s punkin head.

Ole JEB went down like a shot deer, out cold. Fred dashed over to his side, sniffed his face then turned and ambled over to the Ebola, hopping up thru the open cargo door. Man’s best friend only works when a steady diet is supplied was Fred’s attitude.

I figured that JEB was probably as helpful as he was going to be, lying there on the ground, so I gathered up his bedroll and stuff and prepped the plane for takeoff.

I had to spin the props myself while hoping Fred wouldn’t bump into anything in the cockpit and much to my surprise the plane fired up and Fred sat still.

I climbed back in the cockpit and let the engines warm up. JEB was starting to stir and eventually sat up rubbing his head. He leaped to his feet and started screaming at me for being a treacherous son of a bitch and dared me to come out there and see if I could whip his ass without resorting to sucker punches. I revved up the engines and he let out a squawk and started running to the plane, climbing in and cursing me and my family back to my great, great grandmother, who probably did about half the things he said.

He flopped down in the seat next to me. And while I taxied the plane around to get a good run down the beach, he proceeded to tell me about how his near starvation and the lump on his head had him closer to death than any human had ever been and if he didn’t receive some sort of medical and culinary attention than I would have his demise on my conscience for the rest of my life. I figured I could deal with that if it would just shut him up.

Off we went, roaring down the beach, picking up speed as we watched the trees up ahead of us getting closer and closer. I pulled back on the yoke just as JEB let out this high pitched squeal and Fred joined in with a moaning howl. The props caught the tops of the trees as we barely cleared them, spraying mulched leaves into a cloud of green which the Ebola rose gracelessly out of and off we went.

I banked the Ebola around and glanced down at the compass, satisfied with our northward course and brought the plane up to 1000 feet, a low path but one that would keep us out of the clouds and allow me to see what was ahead of us.

We flew for about a couple of hours when I noticed a small mountain range in front of us that I was unfamiliar with and dug out the map.

Nowhere on our course were there any mountains like these and we were too far from the Davis Mountains for these to be them.

I turned a bit to the right to go around the peaks in front of us as their tops were in the clouds. Glancing over at the instruments, I stared at the compass. It was STILL pointing north. This was a bit disturbing, as I had turned far enough to give us a solid northeast reading.

I pointed out the problem to JEB who stopped blathering about his hunger long enough to begin pounding on the instrument panel in an effort to fix the compass. Finding his blows to be futile, he reared back and kicked the panel as hard as he could. There was this clank and a fifth of whiskey came tumbling out from underneath the panel. The compass swung to a west northwest heading and the oil, manifold pressure and fuel gauges dropped to zero, no longer working.

“Praise JEBUS!!!!” JEB yelled, “I forgot I stuck that up there!!!! We are saved!!!”

He grabbed the bottle and started chugging away while I stared in disbelief at the ruined panel and the now working compass that was telling me we were in a world of shit.

I grabbed the map and could see the mountains now that I knew which way we had been heading.

I grabbed the bottle out of JEB’s hand and took a long pull off of it then clocked JEB upside the head, just hard enough to not break the bottle.

“What the hell did you do that for?” He yelled.

“Welcome to Mexico.”

“Why the hell are you flying us to Mexico, you jackass?”

“I am not flying us to Mexico, we are IN Mexico, you IDIOT!!! You fuxored the compass with that bottle and now we are lost over a foreign country without clearance!!!”

JEB sat there for a minute rubbing his head and picked up the map.

“Well… Let’s see if we can find a good Mexican restaurant then.”
I lunged over and began choking him, Fred began howling and leaped on top of us tumbling over and into the controls, putting the plane into a dive. I let go of the old badger and grabbed the controls, pulling out right at treetop level. JEB took a swing at me and connected with Fred’s head.

Now, hitting Fred in the head has never caused any harm as the dog has a skull that is pretty much all bone but it does tend to irritate him. He responded by jumping in JEB’s lap and proceeded to gnaw on JEB’s head, which JEB hates and soon enough, those to were biting and flailing about the cockpit.

I realized that this carrying on was most certainly going to cause us to crash and pulled back on the yoke, sending the two of them tumbling back into the cargo area, out of harms way.

Although this maneuver served it’s purpose, it was not one that the Ebola took to well and the engines decided to stall out. I banked the Ebola over and realized that there was just not enough altitude to restart the engines.

Luck was with us as there was a clearing right in front of us and I managed to plop the plane down and after one long bounce brought it to a stop.

JEB and Fred untangled themselves and JEB, wiping dog slobber off his face asked, “Are we there?”

“Are we WHERE??!!”, I shouted.

“The cantina, you Jackass, I’m starving!”

I grabbed the bottle and climbed out of the plane with the two of them on my heels.

“We are in the middle of nowhere, Mexico is where we are, you moron.”

JEB put his hands on his hips and letting out a belch said, “Well what the hell did you stop here for? I thought we were looking for a restaurant!”

I began looking for a big stick with which I was going to use to explain to JEB why we were where we were when out of nowhere, three pickups drove into the clearing.

They pulled up to the plane and a half a dozen armed men jumped out and began undoing tarps covering the backs of the trucks. One of the men walked over to where we were standing with our mouths hanging open and began speaking rapidly in Spanish.

I waved him off and asked where we were and what they thought they were doing. The man shook his head and said something in Spanish.

JEB looked at me and winked.

“Don’t worry, I speak their lingo.” He turned to the man and puffed himself up.

“Holar there, emeeego, you es speekey de English?”

The man shook his head and yelled for one of the others to come over. They spoke for a second and the second man turned to us and said, “Senors, we have leetle time, joo must get this load out of here before the federales get here, Joo are early but we still have no time, hokay?”

JEB and I just looked at each other. Suddenly it dawned on me what was happening.

“Senor, I think you have mistaken us for someone else. We landed here because… “ I did not know how to explain to him why we had actually landed there and figured that if I was him and somebody told the story of why we were really there that I would probably just shoot ‘em and put them out of their misery.

JEB hitched up his pants and walked over to where the two of them were jabbering away at each other.
“We was looking for someplace to grab a bite to eat. Y’all got any grub with you? Maybe some tacos or something?”

Right about then, we heard the drone of another plane approaching. The men started yelling at each other and ran back to the trucks. An old DC-6 came roaring into view and landed in the clearing, rolling to a stop at the opposite end.

The trucks raced down to the DC-6 and I turned to JEB and yelled that we should probably get the hell out of there. I told him to give the props a pull and climbed back into the Ebola, screaming for Fred to get in. JEB managed to spin the props without flinging himself off into the woods and jumped in, yeowling about not getting the chance to mooch something to eat off of them.

Screaming at him to shut the hell up, I taxied around and gave the Ebola full throttle, racing right at the other plane.

Just as we started to clear the ground, a mess of jeeps came roaring out of the trees filled with soldiers who were shooting at the other plane and at us.

Bullets were pinging off the Ebola as I banked over and sped off over the forest.

“WOOOOWEEEE!” JEB yelled, “Them bastards was trying to shoot us! Did ya see that?”

Remembering what happened the last time I let one of his idiotic comments get to me, I took in a deep breath and took a northeast heading and settled back for whatever was coming. I suddenly realized what day it was and fished up the whiskey bottle and handed it over to JEB.

“By the way, Happy Birthday, you worthless bag of wind.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only interesting thing that would happen on our return trip but that is another story.

You may be asking yourself, "Why in tarnation is ol' JEB pissed?" Well, gladya asked, cuz I'm gonna tellya.

Yer pal JEB's good name 'n' reputation has been smeared 'n' slandered in this movie. Specifically, Lon says the following, and I quote:

"They burned m'farm. M'cows are dead. An' m'wife run off with m'cousin JEB! That son-of-a-bitch!"

I am here to set the record straight ## While Lon wuz off playin' soldier-boy, that big whoppin' wife o' his, Millicent, burned the farm, alright. His cows are dead cuz she ate 'em an' the farm got burned, piece-by-piece, cookin' steaks, etc. She wuz too gotdayum lazy to cut her own firewood. As fer runnin' off with me, hell! I wuz the one a-doin' the runnin', fer fear she wuz gonna eat me, too, once the cows were gone.

Anyway, y'all kin tell everybody that, last I heard, the massive Millicent wuz holed up in a bakery in Springfield. Son-of-a- bitch, my ass!

As fer the movie, it's a historically accurate docu-drama about Frank 'n' Jessie James 'n' their cousins the Younger boys. The long 'n' short of it is, they come home from the war 'n' start robbin' banks, trains 'n' shit like that. Good ol' boys, I'm here t'tellya.

There's a many o' them candyass city-slicker reviewers that'd have y'all believe this movie does not correctly follow history. HELL! Them sumbitches don't know shit. They weren't there, but I wuz. I rest my case.

It also has sum good tunes by Trevor Rabin. What more could ya ask for? I wanna know.

It's a good thang Lon got shot, cuz it saved me the trouble o' whippin' his ass. I give the flick three Fred Heads outta five, mainly cuz o' that lyin' Lon, may he rest in peace. Amen.

I have a friend who owns a small, double-screen movie theatre. On the evenin' o' August 9th, I got to watch Rush Hour 2. Well, what in tarnation does Rush Hour 2 have to do with this review? Not a shittin' thang, except fer the fact that, afterwards, I got to stick around an' watch a private screenin' of American Pie 2, which is set for nationwide release August 10th.

I can make this very simple for at least some of ya. If ya didn't like American Pie, then don't bother goin' to see AP2. I am not the least bit ashamed, however, to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed American Pie. It tickled the ever-luvin' shit outta me. Hence, I have eagerly been awaiting my chance to see AP2.

Now that I've seen AP2, was I disappointed? I pose this question fer the simple reason that, over the years, the vast majority of sequels I have viewed were, in fact, disappointments. Oh, there are exceptions, such as Godfather Part II. I believe most of you would agree, though, that as a rule, sequels generally fall far short of expectations, i.e., if we've learned anythin', it's not to expect too much from 'em.

One of the very cool things about AP2 is they somehow managed to carry over the entire main cast from the original, intact. My favorite character from American Pie was Finch, played by Eddie Kaye Thomas. In case ya fergot, Finch's the one who nailed Stifler's Mom (Jennifer Coolidge). It'd prob'ly be interestin' to take a poll on everybody's favorite character(s).

Plot? Essentially, the boys've finished their first year o' college; they decide to throw in together 'n' rent a house on the lake beach fer the summer; and all roads lead to their big summer party. Throw in heaps o' gross-out humour and/or sexual gags 'n' there ya have it. Don't expect a strain on yer brain. Instead, just sit back 'n' laugh off yer ass. Or, if'n ya got a corn cob up yer ass, go watch sumpin' else.

Fer the record, Seann William Scott returns as Stifler; Jason Biggs as Jim; Chris Klein as Oz; Thomas Ian Nicholas as Kevin; as well as the always hilarious Eugene Levy as Jim's dad.

AP2 wasn't the absolute funniest movie I've ever seen, but I enjoyed it enough to give it three Fred Heads outta five. Amen.

Pardon my indulgent self-pity, but I've earned it. Where's my George Dickle?

Y'all should recall that recent incident at the resthome involvin' Nurse "Battle Axe" Boucher, the jackass and that god-forsaken syringe she buried in the top o' his skull. What many of ya prob'ly fail to understand is this was no itsy-bitsy insulin needle. Oh, but HELL no! Truth is, I don't have a clue where the ol' Battle Axe got that sumbitch, but it looks like a syringe a zoo veterinarian'd use . . . on hippos, elephants, King Kong, whatever. It ain't no syringe intended fer a human, that's fer damn sure.

It's still there, too, right dead-center 'tween the jackass's Howdy-Doody ears, like a radio receiver fer his brain ("brain" used quite casually).

Not that this story I'm about to share has so much to do with that jumbo syringe stuck in his noggin . . . that tale's already been told. It's just that I want all you faithful 'n' loyal readers to have as full 'n' accurate a visual o' whut I get t'deal with each 'n' every day (exceptin' fer those days when his jackassedness be in jail). I mean, as if his penchant fer wearin' that red brassiere 'n' Justin Ropers wuzn't bizarre enough, he's now walkin' around with that apparatus juttin' outta his head like he wuz born with it. Even worse, ever since he acquired his new head ornament, he's become severely cockeyed an' the needle's apparently kicked his saliva glands into overdrive. Shit, this droolin' thang o' his is especially nasty, cuz he chews Day's Work (the irony) plug tobaccy all day long. Hell, he reminds me of a slobberin' big-ass mutant grasshopper.

I need a drink. Be back here, directly.

Now, where wuz I? Oh. That jackass is back in jail. How do I know? Let me count the ways. Hell, I knew his sorry butt wuz in the pokey even 'fore I got my customary "JEB! I need bail money!" phonecall. Y'see, the slammer is only a coupla blocks away from the home 'n' we can always hear him loud 'n' clear when he's gettin' his usual deeeeeep body cavity searches. "FIGARO! FEEE-GA-ROOOOO!!! FIGARO, FIGARO, FEEEEE-GAAAAAHHHAHA-ROOHOHOOOWOHO . . . HO . . . HO . . . F-F-F-FIGARO!!!!", echoes gleefully throughout the neighborhood. Hell, Fred even tries singin' along.

Truth be, it's enough to make any normal grown man cry, or drive him t'drinkin'.

I need another drink.

Aaah, that's better. It so happened the jackass was workin' off some fines by doin' "community service". On that absurdly fateful day, Mayor Crowley needed some watermelons fer the annual watermelon feed 'n' ice cream social sponsored by the local women's club. The fine ladies of our town hold this event in the pavilion at the local park an' always invite a prestigious keynote speaker. This year's guest wuz none other than our State Rrepresentative, the Honorable Ms. Lula McGinty (no relation to that jackass McGinty).

Well, that dimwit Mayor Crowley coulda 'n' shoulda got the damn melons hisself, but NOOOO! Instead, he gives the jackass a twenty-dollar bill to " . . . go fetch me sum melons, convict!" I thought everybody knew it's pure folly to ever give money to that jackass. Nevertheless, our "hero" stuffs the twenty in his pocket, gits in m'truck, 'n' heads straight out to Melvin The Freak's place.

You see, Freaky Melvin's known all around these here parts fer his "psychedelic melons". Ol' Melvin spikes 'em with LSD, mescaline, or whatever hallucinogen(s) he can get his hands on. Of course, our jackass is well aware o' this an' also knows that, when the melons are in season, one can always find several stashed under Melvin's back porch.

Melons were in season on that absurdly fateful day and I need another drink. Just one more.

Damn, that's sum goood Dickle. And, yeah, them damn hoity-toity local wimmens got their sumbitchin' melons, alright. Jeebus. Them broads plowed right into 'em, that is, exceptin' fer LuWanda, the Mayor's wife. Instead o' melons, that big she-whale polished off a 4-quart freezer o' peach ice cream, all the while makin' it a point to tell anyone who'd listen how she wuz allergic to watermelon. Claimed melon makes her break out in hives an' also gives her the diarrhea.

In short order, LuWanda had the ice cream to herself while the rest o' the hens were on the other side o' the pavilion, just cacklin' away 'n' chowin' down on those juicy melvin-melons.

In less than thirty minutes, decorum among the melon-feasters wuz history.

Of course, in short order the squad cars arrived. Our jackass an' the Honorable Lula McGinty were prancin' around on top of a picnic table, singin' a duet o' somethin' that sounded ever-so-remotely like The Girl From Ipanema. Lula wuz also quite giddy over the fact that they were both wearin' red brassieres. Fact is, she got plum "giddy" over everythin', as did the rest o' the melon-munchin' wimmen, most of whom were already in alarming states o' rowdiness 'n' disheveled undress.

Would sumbuddy please explain just whut 'tis 'bout gittin' messed up that causes wimmen's clothin' to start fallin' off? I wanna know.

And I need just one mo' drink. Just a li'l sip.

The good news wuz Rep. McGinty, a Republican, did everything she could to git the whole deal swept under the rug. She called in sum markers 'n' persuaded the County Prosecutor (wonder calls her "that cunty persecutor!") not to file any State charges, bein' as the Prosecutor wuz also a good Republican, herself. The bad news wuz that Mayor Crowley's a yellow-dog Democrat. Hence, Lula's pleas to the Mayor on behalf o' the jackass fell on deaf ears.

True, it didn't help matters none too much that Crowley's jiggly vat o' woman fat wife waddled into City Hall that day, a-huffin' an' puffin' that she'd just been repeatedly ravished by "that depraved animal wonderaz McGinty". Naturally, an audience quickly gathered an' grew larger 'n' larger. Someone managed to scrounge up a coupla chairs fer her, so she was only too happy to describe in lurid and explicit detail all the numerous alleged carnal violations o' every orifice in her massive body.

I suppose in an attempt to save face 'n appease his love-boat (Mrs. Titanic), Mayor Crowley badgered the City Attorney into slappin' the jackass with a half dozen counts o' disturbin' the peace (disturbin' the piece?). But, the jackass'll be outta jail in a day or two and the City Judge'll be orderin' him to yet more "community service". They do say life is a circle, eh?

I hear LuWanda, the Crowley manatee, is plannin' to be a guest on Oprah. Jeebus.

And I need just one more li'l bitty 'nother drink. Just one more. Amen.

This could have been a really good movie.

As it stands I think it will have to be satisfied with being "okay".

Duets, directed by Bruce Paltrow (yes, her father), is three seperate storylines all rolled into one and all having only one thing in common: karaoke. It is essentially I suppose a road musical of sorts, with each storyline containing two people, thrown together by chance and circumstance, on their way to a big karaoke championship in Omaha, stopping along the way to sing in whatever hotel bar or country-western barn-buster they can find.

One storyline regards Ricky (Huey Lewis, a singer I have always really enjoyed), who plays essentially a career karaoke hustler. He hops from city to city, bar to bar, and then like any hustler pretends to be totally ignorant of the contest he is betting a thousand bucks on ("What is this, karate-okie?"). He meets up with Liz (Gwenyth Paltrow) at her mother's funeral. Lewis happens to be Paltrow's father, only he had no idea, and had never met her before. Paltrow plays a very naive Vegas showgirl who wants to start a relationship with her long-lost father, something he wants no part of. He explains that he is a drifter, and that he has a "performance" he has to get to tomorrow. Liz's grandmother somehow wrangles Ricky into taking his daughter on the road for awhile, playing off his guilt.

Secondly there is the story of Billy (Scott Speedman), a cab driver who owns half a taxi and who walks in on his wife cheating on him with the guy that owns the other half of the taxi. Following that he understandably finds himself drunk in an airport bar when he is approached by Suzi (Maria Bello), who needs a ride out West and who is willing to offer sex for, well, anything. He's an ex-seminary student whose life is currently in the shitter, she's a hussy with lots of dreams who only knows one way to get her way. You get the idea.

The most compelling pairing is the one that, thankfully, the movie focuses on a bit more. This revolves around Todd (Paul Giamatti, a very gifted character actor you will probably instantly recognize but have a hard time placing), who is a traveling salesman who never knows what city he's in and spends most of his time in airport hotels (there is a terrific scene where he walks into a conference room and begins his presentation to the Amusement Park Association, only to half-way through realize he is in the conference room for the Poultry Farmers Association. And that he isn't in Florida, he's in Texas). His family hardly pays him second notice, he hates his job, he hates his suburban life, and he finally goes batshit. He announces to his family that he is "going out to get a pack of cigarettes" (his wife casually makes a passing comment about how he doesn't smoke), finds a bar, gets talked into getting on stage to do a karaoke routine by a pretty young cowgirl who also gives him speed to "melt his fears away", and before you know it he is doing 115 mph down the interstate to nowhere in particular with an earing in one ear and a bottle of pills in the other, a crazed look in his eyes as he tries to find any shithole with a karaoke mic anywhere on route66. He ends up picking up a hitchhiker, Reggie, played by Andre Braugher, who is another very talented actor I remember most from Spike Lee's Get on the Bus. Reggie is an escaped convict who knows nothing else but hitching and robbing. Giamatti can hold a tune fairly well, and he finds a bar that only has karaoke openings for duets, so he convinces Braugher to help him out, and it turns out the con has the voice of an angel. That scene, the duet between Giamatti and Braugher where they sing Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness", is probably alone worth the cost of the rental. The two, complete opposites for all intensive purposes, stike up an unlikely friendship, and I have to say the chemistry between the two actors is definitly one of the better things about this movie.

There were many things I liked about this movie. For one, I found myself on the edge of my seat for the entire movie just desperatly waiting for Huey Lewis to sing some more. He has just such a wonderful voice, that everytime he starts singing, I was held in rapt attention. He's not a bad actor either. In the hustling scenes he does quite well. Admittedly, he falls a bit flat in the emotional scenes between himself and Paltrow, but he can do sly wit very well, which is mostly what this role calls for. Unlike most rock stars turning in a film performance, I didn't find myself grinding my teeth everytime he delivered a line.

A BIG surprise, for me at least, was Gwenyth Paltrow. She is probably the best singer in this picture, and that even includes good 'ole Huey. I would hazard to say that if she never made it in pictures, she could have had a pretty good career as a singer. I was blown away when Huey Lewis walked into a bar he was going to hustle, only to find Paltrow already down there, on stage, singing "Betty Davis Eyes". At the end of the picture, Lewis and Paltrow sing a duet, an old Smokey Robinson tune, that also probably justifies the 3 bucks you'll spend renting the film.

All the actors in this movie, who sing unaided, can hold a tune fairly well. And all the singers in this movie can act perfectly adequatly.

But before you go and think I've given Duets a glowing review (I am by no stretch of the imagination a harsh critic), there are many things about the film I did NOT like.

For one the story between the cab driver and the street-wise hussy seemed practically obligatory, and unfortunalty that's a third of the movie. Also, I thought the chemistry between Huey Lewis and Gwenyth Paltrow was, well, terrible. I can't tell which I blame that on--the fact that Huey Lewis, while a perfectly decent actor, can't hold much of a candle to Gwenyth Paltrow in that arena, or the fact that Gwenyth Paltrow plays a terribly obnoxious and poorly written character. The emotional scenes between the two are really flat and unbelievable, and during the final payoff of that storyline, the duet, you are moved by the music, the emotional charge it is supposed to hold just isn't there.

Furthermore, I found the pace really choppy. It continually tried to counter-act heavy emotional moments with karaoke performances, which was odd to say the least. It would almost have been WORSE for the pacing if the heavy emotional moments were ever actually pulled off, which was rarely if ever the case anyway.

But I think what bothered me most about the movie was that it seemed all building up to one magnificent pay-off, and then kind of fizzled and let the credits roll. The ending of the picture was like something out of a bad TV movie, and I frankly felt a bit betrayed. The storyline regarding Braugher and Giamatti was the most compelling, and the pay-off for it was cheap and over-sentimental. The build-up regarding Huey Lewis and Gwenyth Paltrow never actually worked in the first place, so at least I didn't feel cheated there (their pay-off was the second great musical moment of the film, but had no heart whatsoever). And the storyline between the cab driver and the hussy was just so bad, that even though the pay-off was probably the best done of all three, at that point I could not have cared less, and just kept hoping the director would hand over the mic to Huey. It made a passing attempt to reconcile all three storylines together, but by then it seemed like the film knew it had burnt itself out and decided why bother.

All that said I think I WOULD probably recommend the movie. There really are some TERRIFIC scenes, everytime either Paltrow or Lewis take up the mic, you will be held in rapt attention, and the storyline between Braugher and Giamatti really stole the show. But I kept getting the sense that the movie was a rough draft of something that could have been a really great final product.
So all in all, I'd gie it 2 1/2 stars out of 4.

Moulin Rouge, 2001

By 20th Century Fox and Bazmark Films
Starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
Rated PG-13 for sexual content
Running Time: 126 minutes
Internet Movie DataBase page
Official Site from 20th Century Fox

Remember back in the day, walking over to the theater on Main Street, plopping down your 75 cents (or perhaps $2.50 in more contemporary terms) and settling in to watch those fantastic feature films of yesterday? The ones that lifted you up on gossamer wings, and took you on a wondrous trip to a place far, far away?

Well, get ready to go again.

This movie caught me entirely off guard. Most of my curiosity came from the sound bites on TV that proclaimed it as "indescribable". Within 90 seconds of the opening, I was enveloped in the moody use of colors and camera wizardry that allows you to zoom in from far above nighttime Paris in 1900, sweep among the dark streets of Montmartre, and burst through the doors of the night spot, Moulin Rouge. With an explosion of visual and aural artistry, you are there!

The story: not unlike other stories you've known... boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, girl becomes unattainable, boy fights for her honorably... well, you know the rest, or you might. So yes, it's predictable, yet it doesn't matter. You'll still find your adrenaline pumping in the nightclub, that rush as they kiss for the first time, adam's apple bobbing when he gets the bad news, and tearing up at the end ....

The actors: I first saw Nicole Kidman in an 80's movie, Dead Calm, and while I've always thought she did a very credible job in that and movies since, I wasn't a big fan. I was very curious though to see how whe would pull off this role, the singing included. I was pleasantly surprised; she handles it deftly, playing a delightful, and yet somehow innocent, courtesan of the club. While Barbra Streisand need not worry about any competition soon, Kidman comfortably handles the part.

I was less familiar with Ewan MacGregor (having not yet seen Phantom Menace, ugh), but was overwhelmed with his presence, and what a great voice! He is, in fact, the central character in this drama, and carries the film from start to finish. I expect to see much more of him the future ... a definite leading man contender as a box-office draw.

Other notables include the versatile John Leguizamo as Toulouse Lautrec, and Jim Broadbent as the over-the-top nighclub manager, Zidler.

The production: This is where words fail. You may have seen one of the trailers, or even the remake/video of "Lady Marmelade" by Christina, et al, but none of these can speak fully to the wonderful direction, choreography, and visual design put into this film. I predict there will be a few attempts in the coming years to match this style of movie, and they'll probably fall short. Some mp3s from the eclectic (songs taken from the 60's-90's) score:

Come What May - Ewan MacGregor and cast
One Day I'll Fly Away - Nicole Kidman
Because We Can - Fatboy Slim

So no, I can't describe what Moulin Rouge is. Countless others have tried and failed. What I will say is: go see it!! This is unlike anything you've experienced in front of a movie screen, acrobatic sexual acts excluded. A piece of advice: this is not the kind of movie where you sit there and try to figure things out. Walk into the theater with no expectations, and just let it wash over you and carry you away. And if you're on the fence, don't wait for it to hit cable or DVD ... you'd be missing that all-encompassing trip of sight, sound and sensation only a big screen can offer.

I give it at least eight hoisted skirts:

Or on a more traditional scale: four out of five.