Australia

Australia
Many reviewers have taken Baz Luhrmann’s nearly three-hour ode to his home continent to task for being overindulgent, melodramatic and patently absurd.  Funnily enough, those are all the elements I liked about this grand folly of a movie, which strives to recapture the look and feel of an MGM super-production from the Golden Age of Hollywood.  Does it all come together in the end?  Of course not, but it’s a mostly enjoyable attempt all the same.  Luhramann packs his best material into the film’s first 90 minutes, which finds an uptight English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) embarking on a harsh cattle drive alongside handsome horse wrangler The Drover (Hugh Jackman) in ’30s-era Australia.  The film’s second hour carries the action into World War II, when Japanese bombs rain down on the Land Down Under and Kidman and Jackman search amidst the rubble for each other.  By that time though, both Luhrmann and the audience are running on fumes and the movie limps to a disappointing conclusion.  If you’re willing to give yourself over to the director’s half-crazy, half-inspired vision though, much of Australia is daffy fun.

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