Australia

Review: Australia is a film that tries to be too big and too grand for it's own good. Attempting to be a sprawling epic, all that the film manages to do is be rambling, corny and nearly painful to watch. There are times when directors make use of slow motion and bombastic music in climatic scenes. Someone needs to take this technique away from Baz Luhrmann as he started using it in what seemed like the first scene and in nearly every scene following. Each scene seemed over produced, over acted and featured dialog not fit for a cheap romance novel. This could be forgiven if there was something to grasp onto in the plot, however it was too all over the place to get anything out of. It could have easily been two completely seperate films with little connection to one another. The first half the film, about cattle driving, is effusively dull. Before that story arch can even come to a reasonable conclusion it is suddenly made completely obsolete by an entirely different story which the first half largely ignored. The one good thing that can be recovered from this mess is that it's pretty to look at. Australia is a beautiful country and it is shot well. The visuals alone are not enough to make this film watchable however. Australia fails at being an epic or any other kind of enjoyable movie.
Rating: 1/5

Award Consideration: Mercifully Australia is only up for best costume design. The costumes were fine, but nothing that special. It shouldn't win this award.