I am a couple days late with this one, but on Sunday we watched Australia.
It was a long movie. My wife made it about an hour before she got bored, but I made it all the way to the end, fast-forwarding a couple of times through some of the slow parts.
I thought Hugh Jackman was good in it, but I am really not so sure about Nicole Kidman. She doesn't seem to have the same fire as she did in her earlier films like Dead Calm. Maybe I wrongly hold up actresses to a different standard than men, but it almost felt like she dialed in the role. Maybe she just makes the acting look easy.
The plot was rather mildly interesting in parts. I thought the droving was good (but poorly CGI-d). The landscape shots were awesome. The way the movie handled the aboriginal persecution was also interesting.
There were just some bits that were really slow, like the setup to the Japanese attack of the island. By this point the movie has been already going 2 hours and they had to do all of this story setup on how Nicole Kidman's character now works in the communication department. Obviously that was necessary for a plot point, the movie just seemed to drag.
I am also tired of the movies where the guy does something really selfish or stupid, splits up the relationship, and then has to fight his way back to his woman and in the process saving her life. That plotline is so hackneyed and predictable it also causes me to fast forward. Don't get me wrong, guys do stupid stuff to women all the time, but the way it typically plays out on screen is so formulaic that it feels like a time waster. I know that the script writer has to do it to try and make it suspenseful, but it has been overused so much that it really takes me out of the drama. One of two things will inevitably happen:
- Guy rescues girl, happy ending
- Guy rescues girl, he dies just as he saves her
It is rare that the girl ever dies. The cynic that I am, I guess that wouldn't be romantic enough.
I give it 2 stars out of 5. Formulaic and not worth ever seeing again. I don't recommend it unless you can make it through 3 hour movies easily.