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Australia: the verdict
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Well, it’s official. Australia is crap. The only raging debate amongst reviewers world wide is exactly why the movie that was supposed to save our film industry is quite this woeful — Nicole Kidman (and her immovable forehead) is a primary target. But apparently cliches can make a movie and a few starry-eyed Americans think Australia is so bad it’s good…: Nicole Kidman drifts about like a lost porcelain doll. Kidman is exquisitely accomplished at being awful. Did anyone see Cold Mountain? The sweeping American epic (note: another epic) foundered on the rocks of her gormless mirror-gaze. She can’t act. Instead, she drifts around films like a lost porcelain doll, looking frozen, brittle and vapid, staring at the camera with her oh-golly-look-how-I’m-looking-interesting blue eyes. — Times Online How can one do justice to Baz Luhrmann’s overripe epic Australia? It’s several types of primitive melodrama — cattle-drive Western, war picture, anti-racist message movie — whirred together, burnished with state-of-the-art CGI, and blessed with dialogue that defies parody. Jackman has musical-theater chops and knows how to sell material this ham-handed; Kidman isn’t quite as deft. I’ve always admired her gumption in working so hard to overcome a certain temperamental tightness — but that tightness has now spread to her skin. — New York Magazine Throw another cliché on the barbie. It’s a mystery to me how Baz Luhrmann continues to be regarded as a director worth following. A long time has passed since I’ve regarded his lush, loud, defiantly unsubtle output with anything but dread. In Australia, his new romantic-epic-Western-protest-war drama, Luhrmann’s dedication to cliché has become so absolute, it starts to verge on a kind of genius. There’s not a single music cue that isn’t obvious (swelling strings to indicate heartbreak, wailing didgeridoo to signal aboriginal nobility). Nary a line of dialogue is spoken that hasn’t been boiled down, like condensed milk, from a huge vat of earlier Hollywood films. — Slate Baz Luhrmann’s Australia an ‘unwieldy mess’; Nicole Kidman ‘painfully corny’. With Australia, Luhrmann obviously intends to stage a grand romance against the epic backdrop of World War II. But what we get instead is an unwieldy mess that needed another six months in the editing room. Far worse, however, is the racial double standard in a film that proudly pats itself on the back for its own decency. Luhrmann aims to teach us about Australia’s shameful missionary policies, which took mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families to be raised among whites. The way he does this is by killing off Nullah’s biological mother, so Kidman can nobly care for him. — New York Daily News Australia is good-looking but stale and overlong. Australia really should have been made 60 years ago. It would have been timelier, with its tale of life in the remote north of that country during World War II. The juicy overacting, stereotypes and dramatic exaggerations would have been more in keeping with the style of the Golden Age of Hollywood. And I would not yet have been born, so I could have lived a full cinematic life without seeing it. Australia is an unbroken string of clichés. Director Luhrmann does the obvious at every turn, making each character an archetype and every action a crowd-pleasing, grandiosely predictable moment. — Charlotte Observer Australia: Epic romance Down Under. Have you seen everything Australia has on offer a dozen times before? Sure you have. It’s a movie less created by director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann than assembled, Dr. Frankenstein-style, from the leftover body parts of earlier movies. Which leaves us asking this question: How come it is so damnably entertaining? — Time Too much is sometimes just too much, no matter what the philosophical underpinnings. But if you are willing to take the plunge and view things through Luhrmann’s prism, Australia does deliver the classic dramatic and romantic satisfactions its ambitious advertising campaign promises. That ultimate success seems unlikely early on as Australia makes itself difficult to understand by throwing a ton of plot information at us with expressions and accents so authentically Aussie the specifics are at times hard to follow. — LA Times |
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16 Comments
Hey no one said it was perfect
Why are overseas publications trying so hard not to give offense to this movie? I am suffering from a severe case of Shadenfreude. Known to my friends (yes I do have some) as being able to spot a turkey before it galumphs into the home straight. I knew this was going to be a Golden turkey the minute Baz Luhrmann mentioned the project. Nothing personal Baz. But here are some of the main errors made.
1). The saga of a nation seldom works, possibly because directors feel encouraged to throw every cliché in the book at it. 2) The outback has been done to death. 3)Just because you were able to raise finance on your two previous opuses, shouldn’t have encouraged you to believe you were another DW Griffiths. 4) Nicole Kidman couldn’t act her way onto the last train out of Paris. Her face is a blank cheque upon which nothing can be, or ever has been, or ever will be written. 5) Only a person carried away with their own brilliance could have ventured onto the GREAT STAGE OF RACISM. Even if your name had been Jesus Christ, you would have antagonized fifty percent of your audience. That’s not fair. Christ would have known better. Finally, I just hope the wonderful Hugh Jackman won’t be stigmatized by all of this.
Times Online: I’d forgotten how much I loved you!
From radio reviewer on breakfast on 2HD in Newcastle:
“Think of a 600 page Mills&Boon novel titled Crikey.”
Put me a good mood till I hit the traffic.
Why Nicole Kidman, why Bazza why??!!!
She’s unAustralian!
Hopefully she exiles herself , her offspring and her accent to the US and goes back to making epics like BMX Bandits
That wasn’t the only positive review that was left out.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/australia/
So yes, I agree with Matt and Paul’s comments. OK, I don’t plan to see it either, but maybe, just maybe, you should mention the opinions of more than those who just happen to agree with the result you were so earnestly hoping for (as satisfying as it might be to see a film so over-hyped fall flat on its face).
Bloody well done Eleri.
It’s so good to get all these juicy bits in one place.
I haven’t seen it yet. (and I certainly won’t be a paying customer)
But after listening to all the local critics grovel at the shrine of Baz.
I had more than a sneaking suspicion, it was going to be an utter dog.
Sounds like it actually howls at the moon!!
We can add that Richard Schickel, Time magazine’s critic, despite Eleri Harris’ quote, really liked the film, saying
“I love Kidman’s spunk and educability. I utterly agree that Jackman is, as People crowned him last week, the “sexiest man alive.” Above all, I like the good-natured, hell-for-leather energy of the movie, the sense it imparts that no matter how much its silent-picture villains twirl their mustaches, its good folks, the people who represent the generous spirit of Australia, are going to win out in the end.”
As for the New York Magazine, as one local respondent noted, Elizabeth Weitzman has never once posted a positive review of any film. Then there’s Melanie Reid of the London Times who has trouble in saying anything good about Australia the country and its people, generally. In the end, but, I reckon that it’s the paying public which will decide.
I have a last question, however. Just where can I find the “raging debate amongst reviewers world wide(which) is exactly why the movie that was supposed to save our film industry is quite this woeful…”? I must be reading the wrong newspapers as I’ve merely seen a passing reference, once, to this claim, and from memory, it could have been that well-known Aussie-lover, Melanie Reid.
While I will not be seeing this movie (and wouldn’t unless paid at least $100), and I totally hope it is the steaming pile it appears to be, I don’t think your compilation is accurate at all. I have seen quite a few positive reviews for it, and not just from the usual fawners. Our own great David Stratton gave it 3 1/2 stars. So perhaps there is more to the debate other than just how crap it is.
Fair and balanced reporting please.
I’m not sure the Rotten Tomatos review is actually positive. Film gets 52/100 and
Built on lavish vistas and impeccable production, Australia is unfortunately burdened with thinly drawn characters and a lack of originality.
I saw the first 30 minutes before deciding 3 hours would be too much. On the positive, it was long enough to see Hugh having a camp shower (thats a shower in the outdoors, no pun intended) and that was enough for me. I think it is more Croc Dundee than epic but, fortunately for the real Australia, times have moved on.
Another view
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/movies/26aust.html
Your article displays the good ol’ Aussie tall poppy syndrome at its best.
NY Times loved it. Why did you leave their review out?
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/movies/26aust.html?ref=movies
They are right about Kidman, she is the worst actor I have seen in decades all wrapped up as a “Hollywood” star who only really got work because she was married to the very worst actor ever seen.
The repulsive Tom Cruise and his wacko religion.
Oi! Tall Poppy alert.
Your selections are biased in their focus on what went wrong and from foreign sources. Where are the Australian reviewers’ comments. C’mon, play fair …
Oh dear … the LA Times finds ‘expressions and accents so authentically Aussie the specifics are at times hard to follow.’ Tough titty.
Kidman IS terrible and I have been expecting this movie to be embarrassing since the moment I heard about it. But authentic accents being too hard to understand? Does the LA Times have to be quite so self-consciously insular?
I haven’t seen it, but I will.
I don’t know who most of these critics are, but Manohla Dargis, film critic of the nationally insignificant NY Times, was postive, particularly about Nicole Kidman’s performance. Roger Ebert, another nationally important reviewer, liked it,too
“Still, what a gorgeous film, what strong performances, what exhilarating images and — yes, what sweeping romantic melodrama. The kind of movie that is a movie, with all that the word promises and implies.”
Basically, critics seem confounded by an old-fashioned type movie which doesn’t grovel around dirt, drugs, distress and disease and post-modern angst. Friends and family in New York also report to me that most people really like it but that Australians there, especially, are embarrassed by the broad Australian accents. From what I know, they are here, too. Gawd!
I’d go and see it if the dickhead hadn’t called it “Australia”. Gawd help us.