IN WHAT has to be the most hyped and self-consciously local film since 1984's The Man From Snowy River, the anxiously anticipated Australia is not a bad film. But it's far from a great one, and certainly not one destined to be a classic.
That's not to say it won't be popular, possibly wildly so. The film has broad appeal, particularly to the chick-flick market, with its sweeping, overlong melodramatic saga about cattle drives, the stolen generations, the bombing of Darwin and Hugh Jackman's abs. The story involves a prissy English woman (Nicole Kidman) who, with the help of a stockman known enigmatically as "The Drover" (Jackman), tries saving her troubled cattle station from a greedy cattleman (Bryan Brown) and his evil relative (David Wenham).
Blended into the tale is the touching story of a little boy of mixed blood, who serves as a symbol for the stolen generations and racism.
The film is fine, and never boring but, boy, is it overlong. At a mammoth 165 minutes it feels too much like a work-in-progress. There is a lot of narrative flab and longueurs in the first two hours and the film often has the pace of a steamroller with engine trouble.
Luhrmann also seems so eager to trowel on the Aussie cliches — obviously to appeal to the tourist markets! — that Australia is often simply irritating. The word "crikey" is spouted so often the film often sounds like a tribute to Steve Irwin.
As for the visuals, the film is pretty — you cannot point a camera at the outback and not get something impressive — but there are only so many wide shots of the Aussie outback that the human mind can stand.
In terms of spectacle, the film boasts one impressive sequence involving a stampede of cattle heading for a cliff. Lovely stuff. On the flipside, however, the much-touted bombing of Darwin by the Japanese is way too brief and resembles off-cuts from the movie Pearl Harbor.
Performances are fine throughout, with Wenham as the bad guy cattle heir putting in the best work. As the quintesential outback Aussie bloke, Jackman is a sort of ocker liberal who stands up for women and the right of blackfellas to drink in pubs. He's good value, as usual.
Australia is a far bigger deal for Kidman, though, in that she finally stars in a film that people might actually be interested in seeing.
Since her well-deserved Oscar win for The Hours Kidman has been box-office poison after such disasters as Bewitched, The Stepford Wives, The Invasion, Fur and Margot at the Wedding. If the film connects, it might signal a badly needed career turnaround for her.
More importantly, local films with black themes or major indigenous characters tend to do poorly, so if Australia succeeds here it could represent a breakthrough. We've always had trouble dealing with racial issues on film, so, in that regard, the film could be a landmark.
If only Baz had made the damn thing shorter by at least half an hour.