Pun Salad

Not as many kangaroos as I would have expected, and no koalas. Australia is a real kitchen sink of a movie, something for everyone, two hours and forty-five minutes long.

For John Wayne fans, it's got explosions, cowboy stuff, war stuff, a bar fight, and nefarious villains.

For the ladies, it has the romantic saga of Lady Sarah (Nicole Kidman), English noblewoman off to Australia to retrieve her estranged husband from his foolish dalliance with cattle, only to find him recently murdered; her only hope is the mysterious Drover (Hugh Jackman).

For those looking for social commentary: there's the central saga of the young boy Nullah, product of a white father and aborigine mother, a nasty thing to be in 1939 Australia. The movie goes into detail on the social engineering efforts of the Australian government to remove kids like Nullah from their families. (This prompted me to look up the Wikipedia article on the topic; it's still a matter of controversy today.)

And for everyone else: well, there's Judy Garland. She gets more screen time than the kangaroos.

And, don't forget: it's Australia, so there's a lot of breathtaking scenery.

It got mediocre reviews, and was (given its budget) kind of a dud at the box-office, but I found it to be really a lot of fun. The filmmaker, Baz Luhrmann, is not shy about making an epic, with plenty of in-your-face grandiosity. Many reviewers faulted it for lacking originality, but I prefer to think of it as a grand homage to a lot of fantastic movies.