'MOULIN ROUGE'

"Moulin Rouge" (★★★★ out of four stars, rated PG-13 for sexual content) runs 100 years of can-can, cabaret, vaudeville, Bollywood musicals and music video through the juicer to produce the pure essence of riotous musical entertainment. The story of doomed lovers is as basic and timeless as grand opera, while the 21st-century production numbers are fall-out-of-your-seat wonderful. As a penniless romantic poet, Ewan McGregor shows off an impressive set of pipes; Nicole Kidman's voice is breathier, but just right for her role as a consumptive courtesan. And, wow, what a soundtrack: orchestrally reconfigured pop and love-song standards imaginatively re-engineered by a host of hipsters, including Beck, Christina Aguilera, Bono and Massive Attack. Director Baz Luhrmann ("Strictly Ballroom," "Romeo + Juliet") is a creatively courageous filmmaker. In "Moulin Rouge," his bravest choice wasn't resuscitating the moribund musical genre, pacing it at Mach 3 or piling on impressionistic visual rapture. It's telling a heartfelt, shamelessly lyrical love story. That's revolutionary. Can anyone make that work in this jaded and cynical era? These folks can. Boy, they can-can. (Midnight Sat., Uptown Theatre, 2906 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls. 612-825-6006.)