This might be the worst movie of 2008. Definitely the most over-blown of the past few years, and should win quite a few Razzies. I don't know how any studio exec could read this script and green-light it. And apparently Kidman and Jackman didn't read the script before signing on, either.
I knew it was going to be melodramatic and unintentionally funny when the opening epigraph contains the line "a time when romance and adventure were a way of life in Australia," and then the kid starts his inane narration. The only reason I didn't walk out was because I was in a group.
Some of my friends and I had a good time laughing at it, though, especially the gem of a scene near one of the four or five endings. In this scene, Jackman walks to Kidman on the dock just as the mist parts. She requests to journey home, to which he replies "There's no place like it." Classic. That drover is such a romantic renegade, cut from the same cloth as Clark Gable.
And one more thing: Australia is hardly an appropriate title for this grand, cinematic achievement--it should be called "Walkabout" or "He's Going on Walkabout." The word "walkabout" seemed to occur about 10,000 times. If the director had cut out on that redundancy alone, he might have shaved off the extraneous hour and a half of the film.
I knew it was going to be melodramatic and unintentionally funny when the opening epigraph contains the line "a time when romance and adventure were a way of life in Australia," and then the kid starts his inane narration. The only reason I didn't walk out was because I was in a group.
Some of my friends and I had a good time laughing at it, though, especially the gem of a scene near one of the four or five endings. In this scene, Jackman walks to Kidman on the dock just as the mist parts. She requests to journey home, to which he replies "There's no place like it." Classic. That drover is such a romantic renegade, cut from the same cloth as Clark Gable.
And one more thing: Australia is hardly an appropriate title for this grand, cinematic achievement--it should be called "Walkabout" or "He's Going on Walkabout." The word "walkabout" seemed to occur about 10,000 times. If the director had cut out on that redundancy alone, he might have shaved off the extraneous hour and a half of the film.