IHeartNY2 said: "I too had a conversation with a friend about Moulin Rouge the other day and ultimately what we landed on was thatMoulin Rouge is a musical made for people who just want a fun and entertaining evening at the theater, and not for the regular (and pretentious) theatergoers who think their tastes are better than everyone else's."
Sure go for personal attacks, that seems like cool thing to do.
Look, it's an opinion, agree or not, defend the show or not. I don't think it has anything to do with pretentiousness - I thoroughly enjoyed both Mean Girls and Beetlejuice - neither of which were critical darlings, but both were "fun and entertaining" IMO. I personally loved Be More Chill - which most of what I assume you would call "pretentious theatergoers" absolutely loathed. To me, Moulin Rouge was a muddled, clumsy, medley-driven musical mess. I wanted to like it, was excited to see it, liked the movie/source material, and was thrilled with the casting when it was announced. And then I saw it and I was disappointed, mostly by the music and surprisingly by the lack of chemistry between the leads. I wouldn't have cared that it was jukebox musical if it had been executed in a way that I thought was done well vs just cutting lines from 5 different 90s songs and pasting them together to create musical dialogue. I thought it was visually stunning, but to me that only gets you so far.