Australia (2008, PG-13)

  Rating: **1/2

Australia is one of those movies that goes too far to be epic.  It criss crosses from cowboys right and abruptly to war action.  The scenery is great, but the movie on a whole is bland and overlong.  Essentially, it's trying to act out like Gone with the Wind.

Nicole Kidman stars as Lady Sarah Ashley, who arrives in Darwin, Australia, to convince her husband to sell their faltering Australian farm, Faraway Downs.  It turns out that her husband has been killed, and she stays in Australia because she becomes attracted to a rancher-drifter, Drover (Hugh Jackman), and begins to care for an aborigine boy, Nullah.  Rival rancher lord, Neil Fletcher, is also stirring up problems and wants Faraway Downs for his own.

Australia offers some gorgeous Australian scenery, but in reality the plot is over-contrived and the characters are unoriginal.  Baz Luhrmann, the director, ideally casts Kidman and Jackman (both Australians), in the leads.  Kidman and Jackman do indeed pair up well to make Australia feel more like a romantic drama.

Australia could have ended on a rather good note after the cattle had been delivered, Faraway Downs was saved, and all of the characters were in good conditions.  Instead, director Luhrmann did read his history (the Japanese bombed Darwin in 1942), and decides to use that as the centerpiece for the second, unnecessary act of the film that doesn’t nothing to help the story, but only elongate it even needlessly further.

Australia was also flat and only sections of the film I found were entertaining.  Kidman’s role was fortunately convincing enough.  Jackman and Kidman did prove a good enough effective team up, though I do know that Jackman will be and is way better known for portraying Wolverine in the X-Men movies, and so he won't gain much recognition for this. 

In whole, Australia may have been one of the true epic movies out in a long time, but it was also not that much of a good one.