The 2001 movie Brian Cox called the most overrated he’d ever seen: “I just didn’t get it”
It can be frustrating to feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t get the hype surrounding a movie, leading you to impatiently scratch your brain for why, but then, isn’t it good to be able to have an opinion that isn’t the same as everyone else’s?
You’re allowed to not like something, even when it feels like everyone and their nan is raving over it, and you’ve got to be able to form your own decisions while being bold enough to voice them.
For actor Brian Cox, it was a certain 2001 movie that he just couldn’t help but dislike, as much as everyone around him tried to convince him that it was a masterpiece. There’s always going to be a movie that everyone thinks is an era-defining classic that you can’t stand, though; for me, it’s Barbie, which I couldn’t have disliked more, despite friends claiming it to be the most important movie of the 2020s. You simply can’t like everything.
It can feel strangely isolating, though, when everyone’s into something, and it just doesn’t seem to click with you, which is how Cox felt with Moulin Rouge!. Maybe a rather moody middle-aged Scottish man wasn’t the target audience for a show-stopping romantic musical featuring covers of popular tracks like ‘Material Girl’ and ‘Lady Marmalade’?
“I remember when I saw the film Moulin Rouge!. Everybody in the audience was loving it, and I thought, ‘Why am I not loving it?’ But I didn’t. I felt really alone,” he told The Times, “I was a bit embarrassed because I wasn’t enjoying it nearly enough. I thought there was something wrong with me. But I just didn’t get it.”
Set during the turn of the 20th century, Moulin Rouge! was a major hit when it was released back in 2001, with Nicole Kidman giving a star-making performance as Satine, a courtesan who becomes the object of a poet’s affection. Against the glittering backdrop of the Bohemian movement in Paris, where poet Christian, played by Ewan McGregor, rubs shoulders with artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, one of the painter’s most frequent subjects, Jane Avril, served as the primary inspiration behind the character of Satine.
The film earned Kidman a ‘Best Actress’ nomination at the Oscars, where it was also nominated for a handful of other awards, like ‘Best Picture’, although it only took home the prize for ‘Best Art Direction’. Still, the movie was highly praised, with director Baz Luhrmann following on from the success of Romeo + Juliet by utilising further anachronistic choices.
Music plays a major role in the film, which didn’t hold back in presenting audiences with unexpected musical numbers that brought the opulence of dramatic pop songs to the over-the-top setting of the cabaret. ‘Lady Marmalade’, covered by Christina Aguilera, P!nk, Mýa, and Lil’ Kim, was also a hit, sitting at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks.
Clearly, it was something that just didn’t resonate with the Succession star, but that’s OK; let’s just not expect to see Cox in a Luhrmann film anytime soon.
