Australia!

So if you find yourself in a movie theater in the next couple of weeks and upon the screen is a scene where a bunch of aboriginal children are on a boat, singning "Over the Rainbow," and Nicole Kidman is running toward them in slow motion, then you've just wasted the last two and a half hours (yes, 2.5 hours) on the steaming pile of crap titled Australia.

I went into this movie with cautious optimism. I like the director, Baz Luhrmann (his adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is great and I'm not ashamed to say that his Moulin Rouge is one of my favorite movies of the past 10 years). And this was to be his magnum opus to his home country of Australia, populated with two big stars who are easy on the eyes, both from that country, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. I wondered how Luhrmann would bring his unique style of surrealism and quick-cutting direction to an epic that is essentially is his Gone With the Wind (in fact there are many, at least indirect GWTW references in this movie...Kidman's last name is Ashley, there is an auction of the women at a charity ball which she attends as a widow, etc.). And the first 30 minutes or so of the movie didn't disappoint.

But then the movie and his direction took a turn and the whole thing became a big, cliched, Hollywood-style syrup fest, with lingering, perfectly-framed shots on the protagonists, predictable plot events, a whole hatful of feel-goodism (usually centered around racial reconciliation), and so many uses of "crikey" that if you were playing the drinking game using that word, you'd be mercifully trashed long before the sappy ending. The good guys all live, the bad guy gets his due, and everyone lives (spoiler alert!) happily ever after.

It's interesting - I read that his initial ending was poorly received at screen tests and Fox forced him to come up with a different one....in other words, the initial ending was probably interesting! Maybe - gasp - it didn't all get tied up so perfectly! And the use - nee, overuse - of "Over the Rainbow" was awful. Again, this is going to be Australia's definitive movie, what Braveheart is to Scotland, what Bergman films are to Sweden, what Debbie Does Dallas is for...well, Dallas. Why not have some titanic theme that we'll associate with the movie, like "Tara's Theme" from GWTW? Surely he could have fit John Williams' salary into the $130 million budget. But instead he recycles "Over the Rainbow," a song that triggers a nice response in most people but that if you've ever listened to outside of The Wizard of Oz, you realize only really works in the context of munchkins, yellow brick roads, and a pedophile walking, talking man made of metal (those scenes were cut, thankfully, but I've seen them online - apparently a button on his suit makes that oil can vibrate...).

Two of the positives: 1. there is at least a fleeting shot of Kidman's boob (or maybe her body double's, in which case it's less interesting) from the side during a brief romantic scene and 2. Loew's theaters are offering Koala burgers at their concessions as part of the tie-in (a little salty, but quite tender).