"Australia": oh, jeez, don't bother...
So off we all trooped to see the latest blockbuster wanna-be, "Australia", starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.The movie, which is almost as long as the flight from L.A. to Sydney, can be summed up using a single word: ponderous. Another word: suckwad. Two words: bites it. More than two words: blows dead hippos.
A cross between "Gone With The Wind" and the worst episode of Oprah you ever saw, this waste of celluloid has one thing going for it: it's got some grand-ass scenery. It's been described as a "sweeping epic"...see, though, that also describes my once-every-six-months housecleaning. And the results are identical; with both this movie and my housecleaning, you end up with a lot of garbage.
Women will like one scene early in the film, where Hugh Jackman is shirtless and bathing in the Outback. Muscles rippling, abs taut and firm, there he is in slow motion, laving up and rinsing down. Jackman, who early in his career and for obvious reasons had to change his last name from the original "Jorgan" (say it out loud to get the effect..."Hugh Jorgan", and you'll understand), brings a certain je ne sais quoi to his role as The Drover. Nice job, Hugh.
Nicole Kidman is alternately prissy ice queen and sex bomb as Lady Ashley Whateverthehell. One weird thing was that because I was so bored watching the film, I started looking for things in the scenery that weren't necessarily camera-center...and I noticed that dear Nic's breasts changed sizes in various scenes. Who knew they had Wonder Bras back in 1939 remote Outback Australia? Regardless, this provided a little diversion from the rest of the vomitus on screen, let me tell you.Plus, something's happened to Nic's face. It's now all angular and botoxed. She looks like a porcelain doll, a bit, which isn't really appealing to your Nigel. Having previously perved on Nic in marvelous movies like Dead Calm (where she gets naked as hell, big time, and has one or two great sex scenes), I gotta say that the way she looks now is....disappointing. That's just my opinion, though.
Back to the movie: there's Bryan Brown and a really cute little Aboriginal kid who steals the film and Japanese bombing Darwin and sand storms and kangaroos jumping up and down. One kangaroo gets shot early in the film. This little episode I classify as a mercy killing, allowing the poor kangaroo's soul to avoid further involvement in the following 4 hours of cinematic drek.
I came away from my "Australia" experience with a sore butt from sitting for so long, and a renewed appreciation for any director who has the guts to edit out what doesn't matter to the story. "Australia" needed more than crisper editing, it needed someone early in the game to take director Baz Luhrmann by the ears and shake him, hard; the resulting brain concussion may very well have stopped the movie from ever having been made at all.
Don't bother going, shlubbies. Trust me on this. Really.
posted by Nigel St.John Regina Smegmatica Howle-Raines @ 2:42 AM
3 Comments:
I have added that to my list of movies to avoid. The only thing worse than a bad movie, is a bad movie that's entirely too fucking long. To me, long movies are indicative of people without sufficient imagination to tell a story in a finite amount of time.
Amen, brother!
Many thanks to you Nigel for saving me from a drastic mistake in seeing this movie...now, if you can only give me some advice as to how I can convince the wife not to shlep me along....
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