Australia

If the outback is this boring, I don’t ever want to vacation there

Romantic films are pornography for women; they bring an unreal fantasy that reality just doesn’t offer. And for that reason, men will hate Australia while the women who dragged them to it will love it.

Written and directed by Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet), Australia is being marketed as an “epic love story,” which translates to “a three-hour chick flick that will throw some explosions into the last 30 minutes to wake-up the male audience.”

Australia is basically three movies shoved into one. The first story is a western that introduces us to the characters. There’s Nullah, a “creamy” child, meaning he’s half white and half black; Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), a British woman trying to run her late husband’s failing cattle ranch; and Drover (Hugh Jackman), who is just that – a cattle drover (you can see that Luhrmann was real original in naming that character).

Nullah is in danger of being exiled with other “creamies” to an island where men of the cloth can educate them and “breed out the black” so they can be reintroduced to society. Lady Ashley can’t have children of her own, so she protects Nullah on the farm from being arrested. But when she fires the previous corrupt groundskeeper, she must put him to work in herding the cattle north to a cargo ship along side Drover.

The second story takes place after the first task is completed. It is one of love and romance and everything predictable that comes with it – ups and downs. It eventually leads to a fight that sends Drover off into the outback.

The third story is one of war. Just after Drover leaves, Nullah is arrested and taken to the island. Then the pull a Pearl Harbor attack on the city, not only widening the gap of separation of the three, but leaving them wondering if the others even survived.

Australia aspires to be Casabanca and Gone With The Wind, but falls short in so many ways. Considering it’s trying to be an epic love story, there isn’t much to the love or epic sides of it. Only one simple act sparks this romance. The epic war part feels like it was thrown into the movie just to make a big finish for the movie. The result of these two major flaws makes the film feel emotionless and shallow. There is no drive for the characters doing the things they do in the given circumstances. I don’t buy it.

And as if the story wasn’t dreadful enough to get through, the filmmaking will make one go nuts. Luhrmann over uses slow motion more than anyone (excluding Michael Bay). The painfully obvious CG effects, such as dust, animals, cliffs and landscapes, make you feel like you’re watching Peter Jackson’s King Kong. What would be amazing beautiful shots of the Australian outback are ruined by bad CG enhancement.

Claiming to be an “epic love story,” Australia will be the most forgotten of it’s kind. It’s over indulgent. An Aussie making a movie about his homeland is a bad idea. He throws in far too many historical elements for one movie and does a poor job at making them link together.

Who’s going to like Australia? Women and Aussies. Everyone else will see through the shroud that covers the most boring of self-proclaimed epic movies.

Photo credit: 20th Century Fox