Before I agreed with my Chinese stepdaughter to go see Australia (the movie, not the country), I worked my way thru about 20 reviews to get a balanced overview, but strike me pink with a drunk dingo if most reviewers didn’t either hate it or love it.
The only the way out of that was to go and see it for myself. So I did.
Being Australian I have learned not to take cinematic depictions of my country seriously. I was ready to be slightly amused and faintly embarrassed in equal parts. The first ten minutes replaced the smirk on my face with a smile of surprise: the opening was great. Original even.
The narration by the kid worked pretty much. Visually the movie grabbed me like a Darling River croc and didn’t let go, even later when I really wanted it to let me go.
Nicole Kidman as the caricature of a twittery English woman was slightly irritating but you can get used to anything if you have to watch it long enough and it’s pretty enough. Hugh Jackman brought a welcome sense of something or other, and I happily accepted that this movie was going to be a sort of overlarge, sort of cartoonish offering with great visuals and cliched characters and events. Not to be taken seriously but enjoyed for what it was. A MOVIE.
So I enjoyed it. I admit the last hour got a bit slow and predictable, like the last six tinnies from yer third carton of Fosters. I thought the heroes and heroine did a bit too much running into each other’s arms like, and the director was serving up cinematic clichés like a barmaid with three arms, but if that got up your nose you just had to tune out the dialogue and watch the pretty scenery.
By the end credits I didn’t feel like leaping to my feet and singing Waltzing Matilda, or beating myself over the head with a fossilized goanna because my great-grandparents were a bunch of bigoted drongoes who mistreated the indigenous peoples. After all, we said we was bloody sorry, didn’t we??
The editing of the last hour was a bit like a mad woman’s breakfast and I think next time Baz should take it easy on the amyl nitrate in the editing suite. I got out of the theater as fast as I could because at 2.5 hours Australia is almost as long as a wet week and that’s too bloody long when a large coke has been doing a tour of your plumbing.
Was it an epic? Nah, not unless you really want to call it one for personal or sexual-political reasons. Was it really, really bad? Nah. Some bits were really, really good, and on balance it was no worse than a lot of other offerings.
Was it worth seeing? Yes, no wucking furries. If you can develop amnesia and go into the cinema forgetting every movie you’ve ever seen you might even love it madly. Otherwise, just accept the fact that it was made to make money so it tries to appeal to every conceivable part of the viewing spectrum… even the brain-dead.
Was it worth seeing twice? Only with the sound turned down.
