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"Australia", the third film by Aussie auteur Baz Luhrman, is a big, bold, occasionally riveting...failure. It's an experiment in epic drama, with an A-list cast, a massive budget, and a pull-on-the-heartstrings storyline that is comfortable and predictable. I'm not exactly sure what Luhrman was trying to accomplish here. There are wonderful moments, but they don't add up to much. Leaving the theater, I felt that the film was forgettable. Some hours later, I realized that my intuition was right. There are good things about "Australia", specifically newcomer Brandon Walters, who plays an Aboriginal boy, but the parts don't add up to the riveting epic it was intended to be.



The excessive use of green screen is another complaint. For a story that is so much about location, they sure shot a lot on stage, and it shows. There's not one composite shot in the film that doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. I have a feeling that one particular sequence, a suspenseful cattle herding near the edge of a cliff, was created entirely through green screen and CGI. That's not such a good thing when you're trying to evoke the great epics from yesteryear.



Despite its faults, "Australia" has its entertaining moments, but its two hour forty-nine minute running time is a bit overindulgent. Perhaps there's a good film in there somewhere, but Luhrman couldn't bring himself to cut it down to the length it needed to be. Unfortunately, we will never know. That film is lost...somewhere down under.