Epic story, absolutely beautifully shot, great characters, and the music, oh the music!

Australia is the kind of grand movie romance that defined classic Hollywood. It's got all the important ingredients: A pair of movie stars, exotic locales, and a heaping helping of melodrama. In the capable hands of Aussie director Baz Luhrmann, who knows a thing or two about movie love stories (Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge), Australia had 'classic' written all over it. Maybe with expectations that high, Australia was bound to disappoint. In any case, Australia is certainly not all it can be.Much like Gone With the Wind, Titanic, or Out of Africa, Australia is a romantic epic that tells the story of an upperclass woman who falls for a dashing rogue. And that's not where the story similarities stop. Australia also takes place in a unique natural landscape and it's set against an important historical event. Australia is not just similar in story construction to these Hollywood classics, it is a direct variation on them. I don't hold that against Australia. The formula obviously works, and if you can put a worthwhile spin on it, I'm all in. Australia has a distinct Aussie flavor, and it's commentary on Australia's Stolen Generation is something we haven't seen in mainstream Hollywood. The cast is made up of just about every major Australian actor working, with welcome turns by David Wenham, Bill Hunter and Ray Barrett to highlight a few . Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman star, and they are exactly what they need to be. Kidman does her thing as the uptight English outsider, and Jackman was born to play the bushman with a heart of gold. There is almost nothing I can say against the structure of Australia. This exact story has been done before, and done very well.As much as I hate to admit it, because I really like him as a filmmaker, Australia's problems start and end with Luhrmann. I suppose he must have had a passion for telling this story. He is Australian, and I'm sure he felt an obligation to do justice to the country's history, specifically the Stolen Generation, but you can't really see that passion on the screen. This is a sloppy piece of work. For starters, Luhrmann never quite finds the right tone for the story. The introductory scenes are kind of playful and more than a little humorous, but as the film moves along, the melodrama begins to take hold. It gives the film a jittery back and forth feeling, as if competing ideas of what type of movie this should be were all thrown in together, elbowing each other for space. The bigger blunder from Luhrmann is the look of the movie. The Australian Outback is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It doesn't take much to translate that beauty to the screen. And while there are, by sheer volume, plenty of breathtaking vistas on display in Australia, there are far too many ugly ones. Luhrmann relies heavily on sound stages and CGI backgrounds. Digital enhancement is, of course, not a dealbreaker in itself, but the CGI here is so bad, pervasive, and needless that it almost does spoil the rest of the film. There is absolutely no need for this much CGI in a romantic Hollywood epic, especially CGI that looks like a PlayStation 2 game. There is a long, pivotal, cattle driving scene in the middle of the film, and I didn't believe that environment for one second. This is a production that is calling out for old-fashioned filmmaking, and Luhrmann it seems, doesn't have that in him. At least not fully. He tries to have his cake and eat it too when it comes to balancing the art-house elements he's famous for and the traditional elements the material calls for. The result is a movie that is not artsy enough to separate itself from its obvious inspirations, And not traditional enough to stand alongside them.This is a movie stuck in, well, No Man's Land. Luhrmann wants Australia to be a grounded drama about Australian history but he also wants a magic realism tale about an aboriginal twilight. It is not impossible to do both, but Luhrmann only gives half his attention to each. I'm being hard on Australia only because I know it could have been great. The final product is not a bad movie. There is a surplus of ambition and conviction in both leading actors, Kidman and Jackman, and in Luhrmann as the director. This is a solid tale with enough admirable craftsmanship to get a pass from me, but given its potential, Australia is a major disappointment.64/100

Obviously I knew this film's setting, I knew the two leading stars had Australian heritage, and I knew this film was made as "Oscar bait" (a film produced to get nominated and/or win Oscars), I was prepared to try it, from Australian director by Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby). Basically set in northern Australia at the beginning of World War II, aristocratic Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) has travelled from Great Britain to force her womanising husband Maitland (Anton Monsted) to sell his floundering cattle station, Faraway Downs, she is transported by an independent cattle drover, called "Drover" (Hugh Jackman). Lady Sarah's husband is murdered shortly after her arrival, the authorities tell her an Aboriginal elder called "King George" (David Gulpilil) is the killer, cattle station manager Neil Fletcher (The Lord of the Tings' David Wenham) wants control of Faraway Downs, he is working with Lesley 'King' Carney (Bryan Brown) and hoping to negotiate to buy cattle with Captain Dutton (Ben Mendelsohn). Lady Sarah has no children, and is captivated by young Aboriginal boy Nullah (Brandon Walters), who has an Aboriginal mother and a white father, he claims her cattle has been stolen from her, because of this Fletcher mistreats Nullah and threatens him and his mother, Lady Sarah fires Fletcher and tries to run the cattle station herself. When Nullah and his mother hide from the authorities in a water tower, his mother drowns, Lady Sarah comforts him singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the film The Wizard of Oz, Nullah tells her that "King George" is his grandfather, and like the Wizard he is also a "magic man". Lady Sarah persuades Drover, who is friendly with the Aborigines, to take the cattle to Darwin for sale, other whites in the territory shun Drover, it is revealed that he was married to an Aboriginal woman, she died after being refused hospital treatment because of her race, Lady Sarah also reveals she cannot have children. Drover leads a team of riders, including Lady Sarah, Drover's Aboriginal brother-in-law Magarri (David Ngoombujarra) and the station's accountant Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson) to drive the 1,500 cattle to Darwin, there are various obstacles on the way, including Carney's men starting a fire that scares the cattle, Flynn is killed in the stampede. Lady Sarah and Drover fall in love, and she gains a new appreciation in the Australian territory, the team drive the cattle through the dangerous Never Never desert, then they have to race to deliver them onto the ship before the cattle of Carney are loaded. For two years, Lady Sarah, Drover and Nullah live happily together at Faraway Downs, meanwhile Carney is killed by Fletcher, he marries Carney's daughter Cath (Essie Davis), takes over Carney's cattle empire, and continues to menace Lady Sarah, it is established that Fletcher murdered Lady Sarah's husband and Nullah's father. Nullah is drawn to go with his grandfather "King George" on a walkabout (rite of passage), but the authorities take him away, sent to live on Mission Island (a fictional island inspired by Bathurst Island) with the other half-Aboriginal children (dubbed the "Stolen Generations"), Lady Sarah regarding Nullah as an adopted son vows to rescue him. In the meantime Lady Sarah works in Darwin as a radio operator during the rise of World War II, there is the Japanese bombing of Darwin, and Lady Sarah fears that Nullah has been killed, Drover previously quarrelled with and left Lady Sarah, he hears mistakenly that she was killed in the bombing. Drover learns that Nullah was abducted to Mission Island, along with the other children, he goes with Magarri and a young priest to rescue them, Drover finds them and they set sail, they reach the port at Darwin before Lady Sarah evacuates, she hears Nullah playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on his harmonica, the three are happily reunited. Fletcher is distraught that his plans were ruined and at his wife being killed during a Japanese air strike, he attempts to shoot Nullah, but is speared by King George and dies, Lady Sarah, Drover and Nullah return safely to Faraway Downs, King George calls Nullah, he returns to the Outback with his grandfather. Also starring Barry Otto as Administrator Allsop, Bruce Spence as Dr. Barker, Jacek Koman as Ivan, Ray Barrett as Ramsden, Bill Hunter as Skipper (Qantas Sloop) and John Jarratt as Sergeant. Kidman is alright being the hoity-toity English lady, but was criticised for the lack of facial expressions (because of too much Botox obviously), Jackman is a nice man, but a slightly odd mix between Indiana Jones and Crocodile Dundee, Wenham is good at being a very nasty villain, and Walters is adorable as the good-natured orphaned half-Aboriginal, half-white child. I can see why this film could have been considered at the Oscars, it has a great amount of colour in the authentic costumes and the sweeping Australian landscapes, there are some exciting sequences with the cattle herding and of course the explosive war battles and bombings, and the character relationships are the core, but the film is a little too long (almost three hours), it is a little predictable, and the mixture of other genres like screwball comedy, romance, western and war movie don't all work together, overall it is a mildly enjoyable but mostly average romantic period drama. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Costume Design. Okay!

I saw this move over seven years ago when it came out and I still haven't seen a movie as bad since. Prepare to dodge the clichés that are fired out of this movie faster than a machine gun. The characters are wooden (the good guys are VERY good, the bad guys are VERY bad, and nothing in between), the plot is straight out of a Harlequin Romance novel, the script is riddled with lines that garner unintended laughs, and the direction is unbearable.Having endured nearly three hours of this disaster, I fully expected to see Michael Bay and/or Jerry Bruckheimer in the credits, as it had all the earmarks of their work but, to my surprise, even THEY wouldn't have anything to do with a movie this simple-minded. I couldn't help immediately comparing this to "Pearl Harbor." Both movies have so much in common - all for the wrong reasons - and, in both, the audience is hoping a Japanese bomb or two takes out the lead actors. It would've helped their careers.Only one notable quote spoken in this movie kept it from getting a "1" score in my eyes: "It wouldn't be a war if someone wasn't making money." That was the highlight of a film that all respectable Aussies should disown outright.