Oh, ‘Australia’

Oh, Baz. Baz Baz Baz Baz Baz. I love a sweeping epic. I do. In fact, I am so inclined to love a sweeping epic that I will sometimes cry at the sight of a beautiful mountain (with sufficiently rousing strings and brass), or because, like, someone is riding a horse. I also love a dirty, hunky hero, and a swashbuckling tale of outback romance, and I love aboriginal magic (even if it feels a tiny bit exploitative). I do NOT love Nicole “Borg Queen” Kidman, and neither should any of you (unless you happen to be her baby, in which case, can we talk? I have some questions for you, the first of which being how did you learn to read, and the second of which being what is it like having a ceramic mom who fell from space?).

Anyway, Australia the movie is Baz Luhrmann’s sweeping epic tribute to his faraway down-under homeland—“a land of crocodiles, cattle barons and warrior chiefs where adventure and romance was a way of life.” And BOY is it Australian! This movie might as well be Paul Hogan making love to a kangaroo wearing a shirt that says: “CRIKEY! MY OTHER CAR IS A WITCHETTY GRUB” while the Crocodile Hunter’s widow goes, “G’day, billabong! Joey wombat platypus marsupial. Walkabout! Men at Work, g’day! Crikey, Outback Steakhouse! Country? Continent? Both! Fuck you!” The end.

I mean, okay, so it’s not totally exactly like that. It’s actually Hugh Jackman (Australian, tiny-headed) as a grimy, grizzled, extremely hot freelance cattle herder hired to help Kidman (Australian, beep-boop-boop-robot!), a stuffy British aristocrat, manage her ranch, Faraway Downs. The pair scrappily battle an evil cattle baron, contend with anti-aboriginal racism and get bombed by the Japanese (it’s 1942, you see). And, with much wiser editing, Australia could have been what Baz clearly wanted it to be—fun, magnificent, a grand old-fashioned movie classic that opens international eyes to the wonders of his home continent—instead of what it is: a hopelessly hammy, poorly paced, largely uninteresting catalog of Australia’s most enduring stereotypes. I wanted to like it. I could not.

Coming soon: Ron Howard’s epic North America, in which JFK (Vince Vaughn) bangs Scarlett O’Hara (Miley Cyrus) on a bed of tiny Statues of Liberty, while a bald eagle in a Yankees hat plays “This Land is Your Land” on the clarinet and then everyone eats hamburgers until they fucking explode. Crikey!

AUSTRALIA DIR. BAZ LUHRMANN | RATED PG-13 | OPENS WED AT THEATERS EVERYWHERE

Tags: Australia, Film, hugh jackman, nicole kidman, Reviews