“Australia,”

Review By Alice Chuang - Wednesday, February 18, 2009

2 hours 45 minutes! - PG-13 - 3 and 3/4 out of 5

You have to take this movie seriously to enjoy it. If you didn't find it tragic when Satine died in Moulin Rouge!, you are going to hate this movie more than anything else in the world because it's 2 hours and 45 minutes long. Baz Lhurmann would like you to put on drama googles and throw your cynical Jon Stewart thoughts in the nearest wastebasket and revel in the theatrics of it all.

Baz Lhurmann is nothing if not a romantic. You can see it in every single shot in this movie. Everything is the way you expect it to be. Like I've said, if Baz Lhurmann can make Moulin Rouge! on a fucking soundstage, he can do wonders with the Austrailian outback. And he does.

Hugh Jackman's "Drover" is pure serial. He's Indiana Jones and Han Solo with a heavy slathering of Aussie. Scoundrel, cowboy, good-guy but to hell with the rules, making the straight-laced "princess" swoon and hate him at the same time, and dashing as hell to boot. And boy does he work the hat and the whip. If anyone ever deserved People magazine's "Sexiest Man" in correspondence with their latest movie role, Hugh Jackman takes the cake.

Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, tries valiantly but falls somewhat short. Her character of Lady Ashley should have had more fire and way more strength than her turn as Satine in Moulin Rouge! , but somehow she looks out of place all dusty and sweaty and herding them sassy bulls. The botox (WHY?!) she's clearly undergone made her smiles look fake, which made me really sad, rabid Moulin Rouge! fan that I am. It surprised me how weird she was in this...knowing that she and Baz have worked together really well before, she was on home soil, and that she's is a hardcore actress.

The cinematography is the film's strongest suit. But that was really to be expected when going to see a Baz Luhrmann film, Guy knows how to work a camera, what a surprise, right? Several scenes were so breathtaking and well done that they had me whimpering in my theatre seat. The sound design was good, I could tell what they were going for, but because of the psycho plots (getting to that later), they seemed a little forced, with the violins = sad, trumpets = awesome, and aboriginal music = deep.

Anyways I blame the plot. Err, make that plots. There's 6 major plots in this movie: Cattle driving, Everyone vs. Sean Bean, The Stolen Generation, WWII, the Romance, Aboriginal Grandfather. That's like...Return of the King, which had two long movies in front of it, plus books to reference. The myriad of plots makes this movie too goddamned long. By the end, I was going to freak out if I saw Hugh and Nicole make out one more time, as attractive as they both are.

All in all a good movie. Ironically, it reminded me of the first major plot....a huge pack of cattle that Baz Luhrmann is trying to get over the river and across the desert into the ship. Some cattle fall off the cliff, others get dehydrated and die...Baz is as good a drover as any out there, but faced with this impossibly large herd, things get messy. So while some parts don't work, there are some exquisite scenes that you shouldn't miss, so catch this in theaters if you can, because it's meant to be seen on a big screen.

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