Morgan Bell
Kynaston
REVIEW: Australia
December 7th 2008 18:28
very disappointing . . .
Directed & Written: Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet)
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, Ben Mendelsohn, Barry Otto, John Jarrett, Brandon Walters, David Gulpilil, David Ngoombujarra
I was determined to give Baz Luhrmann's Australia a fair go. I paid my money and I watched it beginning to end and tried to evaluate the film project on its merits. I am not a fan of Baz Luhrmann's previous work but i can appreciate why other people are. His talent is making slick vibrant productions, big gay music-filled extravaganzas, with rich cohesive visuals that arise from evenly-applied motifs. Unfortunately when it comes to Australia, Luhrmann fails to deliver even this - his trademark - and instead presents us with an extremely sloppy, badly edited shambles.
Dull story-line aside, Australia's main problem is its lack of aesthetic continuity. Not something you would generally expect from a Luhrman flick. It is hard to believe that this film is the result of a $130 million budget, when the vast majority of it appears to be filmed in front of green-screens at Fox Studios. So much for the reports of how gruelling the actors found working in the outback, they were CGI-ed into nearly every scene. I had also heard reports about how fantastic all the droving scenes were, when really they consisted of a CGI heard of cattle skittling along th edge of a steep cliff (in the outback plains?) in scenes reminiscent of the "jeeps in the jungle" car chase from the most recent Indiana Jones.
I just dont understand? Why bother taking a massive cast and crew out to our unique red dusty outback, to film a story about the magic of nature, if you are eventually just going to go the cheap and nasty cut-n-paste route. Lets just superimpose Nicole and Hugh's faces into this background we filmed earlier. Oh and heres an aerial shot we obviously spent alot of money on, but it doesnt quite fit in with the rest of the movie, so lets just do a random montage of aerial shots, oh and lets superimpose an aborigine doing a traditional dance onto one of the cliff faces, might as well make a tourist brochure with all this left-over footage.
The whole film feels very thrown together. It seems like Baz Luhrmann ran over deadline and got the work-experience girl to do the final edit. Oh it simply must be 3 hours long because it is a Luhrmann production, do not waste a single frame of footage! Where on earth is the continuity guy?
See it for Hugh Jackman, he is looking good, and sounding good too, I think he developed an extra-deep voice for the stereotypical manly role. He looks a bit like Outback Jack . . . perfectly blow-dried hair and perfectly snug fitted clothes . . . yet somehow his manicured appearance is the least questionable aspect of the whole movie.
Directed & Written: Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet)
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, Ben Mendelsohn, Barry Otto, John Jarrett, Brandon Walters, David Gulpilil, David Ngoombujarra
I was determined to give Baz Luhrmann's Australia a fair go. I paid my money and I watched it beginning to end and tried to evaluate the film project on its merits. I am not a fan of Baz Luhrmann's previous work but i can appreciate why other people are. His talent is making slick vibrant productions, big gay music-filled extravaganzas, with rich cohesive visuals that arise from evenly-applied motifs. Unfortunately when it comes to Australia, Luhrmann fails to deliver even this - his trademark - and instead presents us with an extremely sloppy, badly edited shambles.
Dull story-line aside, Australia's main problem is its lack of aesthetic continuity. Not something you would generally expect from a Luhrman flick. It is hard to believe that this film is the result of a $130 million budget, when the vast majority of it appears to be filmed in front of green-screens at Fox Studios. So much for the reports of how gruelling the actors found working in the outback, they were CGI-ed into nearly every scene. I had also heard reports about how fantastic all the droving scenes were, when really they consisted of a CGI heard of cattle skittling along th edge of a steep cliff (in the outback plains?) in scenes reminiscent of the "jeeps in the jungle" car chase from the most recent Indiana Jones.
I just dont understand? Why bother taking a massive cast and crew out to our unique red dusty outback, to film a story about the magic of nature, if you are eventually just going to go the cheap and nasty cut-n-paste route. Lets just superimpose Nicole and Hugh's faces into this background we filmed earlier. Oh and heres an aerial shot we obviously spent alot of money on, but it doesnt quite fit in with the rest of the movie, so lets just do a random montage of aerial shots, oh and lets superimpose an aborigine doing a traditional dance onto one of the cliff faces, might as well make a tourist brochure with all this left-over footage.
The whole film feels very thrown together. It seems like Baz Luhrmann ran over deadline and got the work-experience girl to do the final edit. Oh it simply must be 3 hours long because it is a Luhrmann production, do not waste a single frame of footage! Where on earth is the continuity guy?
See it for Hugh Jackman, he is looking good, and sounding good too, I think he developed an extra-deep voice for the stereotypical manly role. He looks a bit like Outback Jack . . . perfectly blow-dried hair and perfectly snug fitted clothes . . . yet somehow his manicured appearance is the least questionable aspect of the whole movie.
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