Australia

What’s the Story?

Set in Australia's Northern Territory before World War II, AUSTRALIA follows Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), an English aristocrat who travels Down Under to convince her husband to sell their unprofitable cattle farm. From the moment she arrives, she's completely out of her element, and then a mysterious tragedy leaves her a widow with a property she doesn't know how to manage -- and a greedy, villainous competitor to outsmart. Enter grizzled drifter Drover (Hugh Jackman), the only person Sarah can trust to help save her cattle farm. As the two battle harsh elements and unforgiving odds, they (predictably) fall in love and take guardianship of Nullah (Brandon Walters), an orphaned biracial aboriginal boy they must protect from the authorities who seek to strip him of his culture and teach him to become a servant in white society.

Is It Any Good?

Director Baz Luhrmann isn't a subtle filmmaker, so it's no surprise that Australia -- the most expensive movie ever made Down Under -- has been criticized as a self-indulgent, grandiose, and bumpy ride. It is all of those things, not to mention overlong and campy. But despite its flaws (multiple endings, an uneven tone, and overall hamminess), it's also an utterly riveting, lushly photographed epic with all the high-stakes melodrama of the 1939 films it's an homage to: The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (Jackman, like George Clooney, is one of a handful of modern leading men who can channel the dashing Clark Gable).

The film's pre-World War II acts work best, when Sarah and Drover -- along with the adorable Nullah and their other aboriginal associates -- band together to drove their cattle across barren no man's land to challenge the Australian beef industry's oligarch King Carney and his henchman Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) for a lucrative Army contract. The perilous adventure culminates in a boring society ball where Jackman makes a grand entrance and sweeps Sarah away in the rain. Kisses in the rain are as formulaic as film scenes come, but it doesn't matter when the leading couple is so appealing. So, as choppy and manipulative as the two-and-a-half-hour tale can get, the Man Behind the Curtain's gift for theatricality makes Australia hard to resist.