November
17 "Australia" reviews! An "international blockbuster" and/or "not destined to be a classic"

The first reviews of "Australia" are in! Survey says? Well, depends who you ask!

Claire Sutherland, at Australia's Murdoch-owned Herald Sun, can't get enough of the outback:

"It's a movie with a message, but Luhrmann provides the audience with no shortage of thrills, from a cliff hanger cattle stampede to the bombing of Darwin. Kidman and Jackman are perfect together, Jackman's broad speaking drover a perfect foil to Kidman's snooty English rose.... A love letter to the Australian landscape and our history, 'Australia' has international blockbuster written all over it." 

She also calls the film "a compelling and moving tale which traverses war, race relations, class and the Stolen Generation.... (with) some of the most beautiful photography ever seen in an Australian film, from the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley to the Northern Territory in the midst of the wet season."

And then there's Jim Schembri at Australia's Canberra Times, which is owned by Fairfax Media:

"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. But it's far from a great one, and certainly not one destined to be a classic."

And that's the opening paragraph; another 450 words' worth of damning with faint praise follows, acknowledging that the film may be popular, "possibly wildly so," especially as a chick flick. But Schembri also calls it an "overlong melodramatic saga" that is "never boring, but, boy, is it overlong. At a mammoth 165 minutes it feels too much like a work in progress." And: "There are only so many wide shots of the Aussie outback that the human mind can stand."

Ouch. [Herald Sun, Canberra Times]