Australia
2008; directed by Baz Luhrmann

Normally, sweeping historical epics starring Nicole Kidman aren't exactly my favorite thing to watch. But Australia includes one of Hong Kong's best actors, Yuen Wah, so I figured it might be worth a viewing. Maybe I should have Googled a little bit further before renting the movie, because Yuen's role is a small one. As a cook named Sing Song. Somebody pass over a beer. Or perhaps six, because Australia runs at damn near three hours. D'oh!

Anyway, the story takes place shortly before World War II, with the uptight Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) heading from her home in England to check on her husband's cattle ranch in Australia. Leading her through the outback is Drover (Hugh Jackman), a rough and tumble fellow. Upon arriving at the ranch, Ashley finds her husband dead, seemingly killed by an Aboriginal man. The local evil land owner, King Carney (Bryan Brown), wants to buy off the ranch, but Ashley will have none of it, instead convincing Drover to help her drive the cattle to town, so she can sell them to save the ranch.

But wait! There's more! After saving the ranch, a shit-load of sub-plots are thrown into the mix, with the major one being about a "creamy" (half white/half Aboriginal) child named Nullah (Brandon Walters) that Ashley becomes a mother figure to.

Ostensibly, since Nullah is the narrator of the movie, and director Baz Luhrmann tries to drive the point home that Austrailia is about the "Stolen Generation" -- a practice of the Australian government where they took mixed children away from their Aboriginal familes in order to "re-educate" them -- via bookending title cards, one would think that the relationship of Ashley and Nullah would been central to the movie, and would provide its' foundation.

It does, in a way. The scenes between Ashley and Nullah are quite touching in parts, mostly because Brandon Walters does the total opposite of Nicole Kidman, who seems to be mimicking her crack-addled husband and turning every little thing into the most dramatic thing ever. One gets the sense that Baz Luhrmann was definitely channeling the melodramatic style of early Hollywood epics, but he really needed to turn the volume down. Not every scene change needs a sweeping crane shot, nor does every line of dialogue need to be delivered like a The Bold and the Beautiful cliff-hanger.

Of course, since Luhrmann's other films like Moulin Rouge were over-bloated to the point that they felt like they were going to explode like a cinematic pinata after a few whacks, spewing forth whatever the hell kind of random crap was on the inside, one probably couldn't really expect that things were going to change for Australia. To his credit, Luhrmann's bombastic style does work in parts, most notably during a sequence which details the bombing of the town of Darwin by the Japanese.

But those sorts of moments are few and far between in Australia. For a film that run almost three hours, this particular Yank didn't learn anything more about Australia than the great Crocodile Dundee taught him back in the 1980's. Aussies are tough but ultimately deep people, much like the land they come from, which is both beautiful and deadly at the same time. I really didn't need to spend three hours and six beers to re-affirm that.

RATING: 5