HIGH NOTES IN 'MOULIN ROUGE' REDEEM ARTIFICE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

A passionate exploration of movie musical possibilities that's also a desperate cry for Ritalin. That's ``Moulin Rouge,'' Australian director Baz Luhrmann's hyperkinetic kitchen sink of an all-singing, all-dancing, all-artifice sensory assault.

A lot of this stuff is undeniably lovely. Every frame of it is clever (often too, by half). It's certainly energetic/exhausting. And, as mentioned, it covers the waterfront, with references from ``La Boheme'' to India's outlandish Bollywood productions and every Berkeley/Minnelli/MTV innovation in between.

And as you've probably heard, ``Moulin Rouge's'' central ploy is to tell a love story set in 1899 at the infamous Parisian night spot through a series of reconstituted pop songs from the late 20th century. This is often good fun, as well as a reassuring source of surprise recognition in a film disorientingly overwrought with design elements and fast cuts.

But for all the vibrant wit and distracting busyness of its cultural appropriations, ``Moulin Rouge'' lacks the one element it seems Luhrmann was striving for: any sense of originality. He and his overdriven production team - designer Catherine Martin, cinematographer Donald M. McAlpine, editor Jill Bilcock, music director Marius DeVries and choreographer John O'Connell deserve distinguished service medals, if not necessarily Oscars - were so feverishly recombining a century's worth of musical and theatrical notions that they forgot to leave any space for anything new and genuinely thoughtful to take hold.

Then again, if there was ever a movie that screamed to be appreciated for its surface pleasures, this one's it. And those pleasures are plentiful if you can get past the cacaphony that surrounds them.

The three brightest gems in this digitally enhanced, soundstage-set tiara of a movie are, refreshingly, the vibrantly human talents of Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent.

She's Satine, the top performer and courtesan at the Montmartre burlesque house. Men from all walks of life are enchanted by her talents - and Kidman, who trained many months to be able to pull this off, does a Marilyn-quality rendition of ``Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.'' Of course, most of these gents are more interested in a possible after-show audience in Satine's love-nest apartment, built for some reason inside a giant elephant.

One lucky swain is a romantic but inexperienced English writer named Christian (McGregor). Mistaking him for the wealthy Duke (Richard Roxburgh) who's promised to finance Moulin Rouge's first legitimate stage show in return for her favors, the mercenary vamp is uncharacteristically smitten when the clueless but sincere Christian serenades her with Elton John and Bernie Taupin's ``Your Song.''

Despite endangerment by both Christian's friends (a tiresome pack of merry Boho pranksters led by John Leguizamo's road-show Toulouse-Lautrec) and Luhrmann's insistent use of unmotivated sound effects, this is one of the film's best-performed sequences. McGregor has a wonderfully soft yet deeply emotional singing voice, Kidman's seduction efforts are a physical comedy marvel, and when the whole gang breaks into a pitch for their show, ``Moulin Rouge'' comes close to the rapturous heights of Minnelli's 1953 masterpiece ``The Band Wagon.''

However, lacking the master's discipline, Luhrmann only hits such high notes sporadically. More often than not, it's Broadbent who spikes a bit over. You haven't quite seen everything yet until you watch the portly Brit, who plays the club's amoral impresario, do his utterly disarming rendition of ``Like a Virgin.''

The wisp of a plot involves the Duke's increasingly frustrated lust, Satine and Christian's growing devotion, the usual romantic misunderstandings and an inevitable case of mortal consumption. There's a hint of a theme about the relationship between creativity and prostitution - something a moviemaker trying to do personal art on a big studio's budget should know a little about - but Luhrmann, whose last picture was the Attention Deficit Disorder ``Romeo + Juliet,'' is too busy swinging his camera around and flash-cutting to the next baroque tableau to really examine the subject.

As superficial operetta, though, the contraption more or less works. ``Moulin Rouge's'' insistent style will either give you your money's worth or just give you seizures; your enjoyment may depend on your metabolism more than your aesthetic sense.

``MOULIN ROUGE''

(Rated PG-13: sex, drug use)

The stars: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Jim Broadbent, Richard Roxburgh.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Produced by Luhrmann, Martin Brown and Fred Baron. Released by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: Two hours, 10 minutes.

Playing: Avco, Westwood.

Our rating: Three stars