CINEMA: Australia, Part 2

Either epically cheesy, or cheesily epic, Baz Luhrmann’s latest is a mix of Wallaby western and Roo romance. You’ll find yourself laughing at the most inappropriate moments in this very silly and often appallingly acted slice of melodrama that makes Gone With The Wind look like the finest high art.

Nicole Kidman is the worst culprit here coming over as shrill and false as British aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley who flies to Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory to sort out her errant husband and his failing ranch. She arrives on the eve of the Second World War to find her husband murdered, the ranch in disarray and her only allies are an orphaned mixed race aboriginal boy (the absolutely brilliant Brandon Walters) and a truculent drover called… The Drover (Hugh Jackson). With their help she vows to turn around the fortunes of the ranch and give the region’s cattle baron (Bryan Brown) and his sidekick (David Wenham) a run for their money.

Although the film looks stunning with long sequences spent in the saddle as Sarah and The Drover drive their cattle through the outback to market, Luhrmann’s desire to make an epic gets the better of him and everything is painted with the absolutely broadest of brush strokes. As The Drover chucks a bucket of water over his muscled torso in slow motion, with Lady Sarah all aquiver in the background, you just have to titter and the recurrent theme of The Wizard Of Oz is pushed so hard you’ll wish Dorothy and Toto had disappeared over that rainbow for good. Yet, through all the cheese young Brandon Walters never strikes a false note and even at 165 minutes long this ragged romp of a film fair rattles along and entertains for all the wrong reasons.      Dee Pilgrim