Australia, round 1.

"In what has to be the most hyped and self-consciously local film since 1984's The Man From Snowy River, the anxiously anticipated Australia is not a bad film," writes Jim Schembri in the Age. "But it's far from a great one, and certainly not one destined to be a classic. That's not to say it won't be popular, possibly wildly so.... The film is fine, and never boring but, boy, is it overlong."

"It's a movie with a message, but [Baz] Luhrmann provides the audience with no shortage of thrills, from a cliff hanger cattle stampede to the bombing of Darwin," writes Claire Sutherland for the Herald Sun (via Lou Lumenick and Jeffrey Wells). "[Nicole] Kidman and [Hugh] Jackman are perfect together, Jackman's broad speaking drover a perfect foil to Kidman's snooty English rose."

How and why did Hugh Jackman become a star in the first place? Matt Dentler floats a playful theory.

Updated through 11/23.

Updates, 11/18: "Like his earlier films Strictly Ballroom, Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge, Australia shows Baz Luhrmann as a very theatrical director," writes David Stratton in the Australian. "He has a great eye for compositions and the film is beautifully shot by Mandy Walker, but there's theatricality about the film which is a bit off-putting at the beginning.... The film is not without flaws, it's not the masterpiece that we were hoping for, but I think you could say that it's a very good film in many ways. While it will be very popular with many people I think there's a slight air of disappointment after it all."

"It has every Australian cliché you could hope for, from kangaroos and Nicole Kidman to aborigines going walkabout and, yep, Waltzing Matilda," writes Anne Barrowlcough in the London Times. And yet "Luhrmann's long-awaited, and over-budget epic Australia manages, against the odds, to avoid turning into one big sunburnt stereotype about Godzone country. Instead, in what turns out to be a multi-layered story it describes an Australia of the 1940s that is at once compellingly, beautiful and breathtakingly cruel."

Updates, 11/20: "With Australia, Baz Luhrmann has fearlessly gone for the biggest, lushest goal he could imagine - a romantic, old-fashioned epic to stand beside Gone With The Wind," writes Frank Hatherley in Screen Daily. "Though it fails to reach such Hollywood heyday heights, Australia's combination of high adventure, awesome landscapes and panting passions is sure to bring out romance-starved adult audiences - probably skewing female - when the film's international roll-out starts in Australia and the US on November 26."

"Embracing grand old-school melodrama while critiquing racist old-fashioned politics, Baz Luhrmann's grandiose Australia provides a luxurious bumpy ride," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy; "like a Rolls-Royce on a rocky country road, it's full of bounces and lurches, but you can't really complain about the seat. Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long. But the beauty of the film's stars and landscapes, the appeal of the central young boy and, perhaps more than anything, the filmmaker's eagerness to please tend to prevail."

"Despite some cringe-making Harlequin Romance moments between homegrown Hollywood stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, the 1940s-set Australia defies all but the most cynical not to get carried away by the force of its grandiose imagery and storytelling," writes Megan Lehmann in the Hollywood Reporter. "And, yes, there are kangaroos."

It's "well done for what it is, assuming that you like old-fashioned Hollywood movies of the sort they do not make anymore," writes Variety's Anne Thompson.

"We all know Luhrmann is no fan of naturalism, but Australia is a manifestation of magical reality by a very gifted madman-auteur," writes Jeffrey Wells.

Update, 11/23: John Horn has a long talk with Luhrmann in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at November 17, 2008 3:14 PM