David Skinner, assistant managing editor

HERE'S MY considered opinion of "Moulin Rouge": It sucks. There's no need to get defensive. It's no big deal. A lot of movies suck. But then again, a lot of movies don't snag eight Oscar nominations. Okay, okay, calm down. The truth hurts, I know. In fact, the movie's suckiness was, in fact, a bit of a disappointment to me, too. I rather like several of the actors involved, and I adored director Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" a few years back.

Sadly, I was one of a very small number of people who seemed to realize how bad "Moulin Rouge" was. After the Oscar nominations came out, there were those other awards, you know, the ones that are supposed to predict the Oscar winners, and everywhere I looked this crapalicious pseudo-musical was being feted.

It made me wonder if my hostility to the picture was rooted in ignorance. See, I haven't watched all that many musicals, so I decided to rent a few. My choices were "West Side Story," "Cabaret," and "My Fair Lady." These weren't picked from a hat, of course. They are the three most Oscar-winning musical movies ever. And here's what I learned. It's not musicals that suck, it's only "Moulin Rouge."

An important thing to know about musicals (I just learned this myself) is that they have music original to themselves. And, in fact, the quality of their music is a primary criterion for judging their overall quality. In fact, a musical without its very own music would

Yes, yes, I realize I don't know that much about musicals. One of my most shameful memories ever is falling in love with Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats" when I was in fourth grade. (No, really, it was kind of cool when those slinky feline creatures crawled into the audience rows.) So I can't actually make any claims about having the most exquisite taste in the world, but this thing about musicals having original musical was, until the Oscar nominations, kind of a hard and fast rule. Furthermore, stringing together numerous, unrelated pop songs to merely tickle the memory chords of an audience was something only insufferable piano-lounge hacks were supposed to do.

Now back to these other musicals. Not only was their music original, but their songs constituted a permanent contribution to the culture. "Wilkommen," the opening song from "Cabaret," "Tonight" and "America" from "West Side Story," or "Get Me To The Church On Time" and "On The Street Where You Live" from "My Fair Lady" represented net additions to preexisting music. Now, as far as I can tell, "Moulin Rouge" is merely borrowing music that was already around. Which means that, musically, "Moulin Rouge" offers nothing.

The storylines of the three classics I saw were also much, much stronger. Even after watering down George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," "My Fair Lady" was bursting with character and ideas. Rex Harrison as the mischievous, self-pleasing misogynist versus the romantic-souled "guttersnipe," played beautifully by Audrey Hepburn (though of course sung by someone else), helped provide a thoughtful and even wise comedy about men and women.