Parents' Guide to Australia

Baz Luhrmann isn't subtle, so it's no surprise that this compelling movie -- the most expensive one 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.