Australia

[November 26th, 2008]

“Looks like we’ve got a bit of competition back in the meat business,” opines an onlooker midway through Australia, as Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman triumphantly herd cows onto a boat. By this time, after nearly 90 minutes of outback bombast at the brink of World War II, the stakes have been established: Newly widowed Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman) will battle for the rights to land, beef and an orphaned Aborigine boy (Brandon Walters), all while flirtatiously scrapping with a cattle drover called “The Drover” (Jackman). The setup—a prim woman of means finds love with a knockabout adventurer—was also, as I recall, the premise of Crocodile Dundee and The Man From Snowy River. This is apparently the only story anybody in Australia knows.

At any rate, it looks like Baz Luhrmann is back in the cheese business. Flush with the success of Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann has decided to employ an entire continent as the soundstage for his latest glitzy production number. Australia is designed as a grandly moonstruck revue, with a splash of local color. There is a lot of local color. A drunkard’s death is mourned by the consumption of a bottle of Poor Fella Rum. A murder is disguised as a crocodile attack. A barroom breaks into a chorus of “Waltzing Matilda.” The Aborigine child uses magic to stop the cattle from stampeding off a cliff. Crikey, etc.

Australia is at its best when most theatrically unhinged (the Drover and Lady Ashley consummating their desire in a downpour works pretty nicely); it is at its most embarrassing when it attempts to be socially conscious (it laments the barbarities of colonialism while condescendingly marveling at the noble savages). Kidman and Jackman have tolerable chemistry—he looks like his beard would be scratchy; she looks irritated. Then the Japanese zeros come screaming over the horizon. Entertainment-biz scuttlebutt has it that Luhrmann was strong-armed by 20th Century Fox executives who made him paste a happy ending onto his doomed romance. It doesn’t really matter. Tragic bullshit or happily-ever-after bullshit: Either way, it’s still bullshit. Using this kind will probably make people happier, so I can’t see why not. PG-13.