Australia Reviews

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman Australia Movie

Early reviews by the Australian press for Baz Luhrmann's Australia, were that the film was "good, but no classic".¹ Variety's review agrees, "the beauty of the film's stars and landscapes, the appeal of the central young boy and, perhaps more than anything, the filmmaker's eagerness to please tend to prevail, making for a film general audiences should go with, even if they're not swept away."²

Australia is set in northern Australia during World War II. In the trailer for Australia an upper-class lady (Nicole Kidman) travels to Australia where she meets and ultimately falls in love with Australian cowboy (Hugh Jackman). Despite cultural and class differences, they fight for their love and her ranch while struggling to survive World War II bomb attacks.³

Fast Facts

Release date: November 26, 2008

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Writers: Baz Luhrmann and Stuart Beattie

Producers: Baz Luhrmann, G. Mac Brown and Catherine Knapman

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Baz Luhrmann's first new film since Moulin Rouge! (2001), which also starred Nicole Kidman

The most expensive Australian movie ever made⁴

Film run time: 165 minutes

MPAA: PG-13

Review Quotes

"It has every Australian cliche you could hope for, from kangaroos and Nicole Kidman to aborigines going walkabout and, yep, Waltzing Matilda. Instead, in what turns out to be a multi-layered story it describes an Australia of the 1940s that is at once compellingly, beautiful and breathtakingly cruel."—London Times⁵

"The film is fine, and never boring but, boy, is it overlong. At a mammoth 165 minutes it feels too much like a work-in-progress. There is a lot of narrative flab and longueurs in the first two hours and the film often has the pace of a steamroller with engine trouble."—Canberra Times⁶