Australia

Down Chunder

By David Wildman

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For anyone who wonders why they don't make movies like they used to, Australia is your answer. A shameless attempt to suck Oscar's golden dick, this vapid billion-dollar epic strives to combine and lavishly imitate every epic movie cliché, resulting in something so uninspired, overblown and arrogant it boggles the mind. It's a sappy Disney comedy. No, wait; it's the tale of a strong woman surviving in the wilderness! No, wait, it's a new Western. No, no, hold on, it's a war flick! Crikey!

The story involves British babe Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), who relocates to her husband's Australian ranch, only to find him murdered. Commence lots of cheap yucks about her "delicate sensibilities." Her guide, Drover (Hugh Jackman), flexes his pecks and she drools. She takes over the cattle ranch, fires bad guy Fletcher (David Wenham) and convinces Drover and his requisite ragtag group of colorful volunteers—including aboriginal boy Nullah (Brandon Walters), a drunk lawyer and herself—to move the heifers across the desert to the city of Darwin, where she can clean up selling them to the military. Cue wacky music as she shows up in full riding competition attire. Before long, she and Drover are sucking face (so much for sexual tension). After foul play from the lurking Fletcher, they have to cross the "Never Never" part of Australia to get the cattle in on time (now it's Lawrence of Australia). Finally they get there, sell the cattle and everyone's happy. At this juncture, I'm getting out of my seat, thinking: "OK, awful movie, but thank God it's over." Not so fast. She becomes surrogate mother to Nullah, who runs away, then Drover runs away and then the Japanese kill lots of people. After some gratuitous CGI of burning ships and bombed buildings, plus some bogus heroics, the whole thing finally, mercifully, ends.

Not since Bewitched has Kidman inspired such revulsion. Her character vacillates unconvincingly between overprivileged dolt, horny wench and hard-assed business woman without the slightest middle ground. And Mr. Huge Act-man's swarthy cattle driver with the wink in the eye is just plain barf.

The cringe moments are as numerous as they are egregious. Lowlights include Kidman singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" badly to a wide-eyed Nullah (and much more awful "Oz" stuff) and Nullah's grating voiceover of banalities like: "When Mrs. Boss first come to this land, she look but she do not see." Then there's Jackman's Drover, once married to an aborigine, trying to drive home the Big Statement about racism by drawling: "I'm as good as black to them." He's referring to the upper-class denizens of a fancy ball, but he immediately cuts his beard and shows up to said ball anyway (for an excellent film about aboriginal race relations, try Peter Weir's The Last Wave).

Baz Luhrmann is known for his over-the-top productions, but not something this soulless. Luhrmann tries to channel John Ford and David Lean, but most of the film just seems to be on crack. If Australia wins any Academy Awards this year, it will be a testament to the mediocrity mainstream Hollywood has sunk to in this season of disappointing Big Screen fare.

AUSTRALIA

RATED | PG-13

OPENS | 11.26.08