Australia the Movie Reviewed by Euro Geezer
by Euro Geezer
*MOVIE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW*
The bombastic film Australia, written by director Baz Luhrmann, writers Stuart Beattie, Ronald Harwood, and Richard Flanagan, and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, is a big budget epic with one cliché after another.
If you don’t have a large film knowledge or you like to spot old movie plots and characters, you may very well enjoy this colossal mashing of classic Hollywood cinema.
Most characters are stolen from old classic films.
From Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid we get the far too lovable boy, Creamy, who is running from the authorities.
Nicole Kidman’s character directly takes from the celebrated role of Liz Taylor in Giant. Australia replaces Giant‘s Texas scenery, as Nicole plays the beautiful spoiled rich lady trying to survive on the dirty desolate ranch. She even sings “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” like Liz Taylor did, but it is so bad, you can’t believe they left it in the movie.
The Evil Cattle Baron who killed Nicole’s unfaithful husband takes over the town by betraying his friends and murdering his enemies. The villain shows vicious cruelty to the local natives and to everyone else. Will this bad guy get what is coming to him? You know he will because everything is soooo predictable.
Hugh and Nicole (like Humphrey Bogart & Kathrine Hepburn) go on an impossible mission to cross the Australian desert with a zillion cows while being set upon at every turn by the Cattle Baron’s hostile assassins full of exciting stampedes and narrow escapes. Are we watching The African Queen?
Finally, just as our heroes reach their destination safely, Japanese planes bombard them and set everything ablaze in a spectacular fire. The locals engage in heroics. The Yanks arrive. Sound familiar?
Biggest fault? The long nude love scene. In this kind of romantic epic, all that soft core porn was in my old geezer opinion, extraneous, though girls will enjoy Hugh Jackman’s undulating butt probably nearly as much as I liked Kidman’s bobbling boobs and rippling thighs — better than looking at a dish of chopped liver, sure. All that hot stuff just didn’t fit in the movie though because both characters up to this point are asexual like Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia.
The annoyingly adorable kid gets shot. Dies. Kidman gets blown to bits in a bomb blast. Dies.
A rescue boat piloted by Jackman comes in the nick of time to save the lovable kids at the orphanage. Are they all dead? Of course not. The kids stumble out of the dust . It’s Schindler’s List. But it’s not over yet. The big non-surprise is yet to come.
Here we think the kid and Nicole are dead — but alas, no! With a happy Hollywood ending, Nicole re-appears: a survivor, covered in dust and blood, but looking gorgeous as ever. The lovers run towards each other. They embrace and go off into the sunset. Presumably they will live happily ever after with the lovable kid.
Oh, but wait, we are not done. There are a few more exciting and improbable last minute events. The murderous Cattle Baron shoots his own son — yes, poor Creamy the kid. It takes more than mere bullets through the heart to finish off little Creamy. He comes back from the dead again. And again.
Clips from The Wizard of Oz with cameos by a young Judy Garland keep cropping up. The song “Somewhere over the Rainbow” is woven into the story as a recurring theme. What can you make of all this mish mash? A Comedy that turns into a Western, then a Romance, then a Civil Rights Struggle, and finally a World War II movie? Yes. It is all of that and more.
As Sir Winston Churchill once said: “Never have so many, with so much, done so little.”
Was Australia bad?
After all that. I’ll bet you expected this old geezer to give Australia a bad rating. Au contraire. In spite of zero originality and total predictability, the reinterpretation and mixed up narrative becomes movie magic.
Australia is a real colorful omelet full of wonderful costumes, spectacular nature cinematography, and grand special effects that enhance the story. In one moment, Creamy stares down a stampeding herd of cows from the edge of a cliff. The camera zooms down from outer space (Google Earth?) as the animals come to a sudden stop. Suspend disbelief and you have an impressive moment.
I think cynics and film buffs (like me) can laugh, cry, and enjoy several moments of high Hitchcockian suspense. Rating: Not as bad as you’d expect. B+
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Perhaps it’s a vegetarian omelet, for there was no meat in this movie. Unless you count Kidman’s bobbling boobs and rippling thighs. Yummy!
Actually, I agree with everything you’ve posted. To be honest, it feels more complete when a movie jumps genres like this one does. When you get such a vast array of emotions from a film, you’ll never leave dissatisfied.