Nothing wizard here

Always a worrying sign, when a studio places an embargo on critics at the world’s first screening of a film, as happened with Australia (2008) – the inevitable question is: ‘So, does 20th Century Fox know something really bad that we don’t?’

Unfortunately, it would appear that the answer is pretty much in the affirmative. Baz Luhrmann is a director who has split audiences and critics alike down the years – the pro-votes tend to veer towards his sublime Romeo and Juliet (1996) (well, I say sublime but Colin, of course, hated it) and, of course, the brilliant Strictly Ballroom (1992), which differs from the recent BBC craze Strictly Come Dancing in that it isn’t fucking awful, while the naysayers tend to gang up on Moulin Rouge (2001) – its star, Nicole Kidman, was Oscar nominated, but it’s nevertheless an overblown and somewhat insincere musical maelstrom.

And it’s doubtful that Kidman will garner a nod for a gong with Australia – she plays English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley, newly arrived in northern Australia at the beginning of World War II, having just inherited a huge cattle ranch. The Machiavellian machinations of English cattle barons force her to reluctantly join forces with red-neck stock-man Drover (Hugh Jackman), to drive 2,000 head of cattle over Australia’s beautiful, unforgiving terrain – and, on their journey, they fall in lurve, of course, and witness the Japanese attack on Darwin.

A shame that this is so ho-hum, because the creative team involved could have done much better, from director downwards. Luhrmann shares screenplay duties with the talented Stuart Beattie (who wrote Collateral (2004) and 30 Days of Night (2007)), Ronald Harwood (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)) and Australian novelist Richard Flanagan – while visually stunning, it’s populated with so many stock characterizations that any notions of originality are quickly dismissed. Kidman’s performance is exaggerated from the outset, and the remainder of this 165-minute film (way too long) could easily have been co-directed by Victor Fleming, whose Gone With the Wind (1939) provides a veritable checklist, with his The Wizard of Oz (1939) also frequently referenced. Even Michael Bay gets a look-in – there is more than a little of his god-awful Pearl Harbor (2001) here too, with the destruction of a military outpost forming a backdrop to a romance.

Hugh Jackman is solid enough as Drover, and there’s a perilously-close-to-interesting subplot involving a mixed-blood child named Nullah (Brandon Walters) who becomes the pawn in a battle over Lady Ashley’s land, but of any serious, sensitive treatment of black-white relations in wartime Australia, there is little or no sign, with Luhrmann laying on ‘Dreamtime’ mysticism with a trowel.

Of course, I’m just a hardened cynic, and maybe the public will respond in their droves, but it’s unlikely that Australia will see much return on its mega-millions budget. Hopefully, all involved will move on quickly to work more worthy of their talents.

165 mins.