Review: Australia
Baz Luhrmann takes a 7 year break (after the award winning Moulin Rouge!), to get things going big, in the form of a eye catching 2 and a half hour long attempt to sell us Australia. Heck, if this long running ad wasn’t enough, he was offered a job to do some more TV spots after finishing the movie.
Yes, you could get sold watching this movie, with lots of wide angle scenery shots of desert, mountains and oceans. The characters however, didn’t pay off that easy.
It’s actually your basic different society love story with its usual relationship hurdles. To my feeling, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman don’t match up too well, but the story takes all kind of other turns, trying to insert some real life Aboriginal history (the Stolen Generation), but for supposed cinematic reasons, also inserts some mysticism. It literally takes a page out of a random X-Men or Wolverine comic (fans will know what I mean, with the extra irony of Hugh Jackman starring), and that’s just too laughable.
So, big budget, basic entertainment. Nothing more.6½.