Australia(n) director Baz Luhrmann has had his latest effort described as a love letter to his home land. If that’s the case, the country has every right to tear it up and throw it right back in Luhrmann’s face. Furthermore, if Oz had an older brother, he’d be completely within his rights to give Baz a black eye and to sternly warn him that there was plenty more where that came from if he tried the same again.

What's that you say? Get off my horse and drink some milk?

When the project was first announced, who couldn’t help but get excited. Luhrmann reunited with his Moulin Rouge muse Nicole Kidman, with fellow antipodean Hugh Jackman attached. Add to that their breathtaking home landscape, and you’re surely on to a winner, right?

Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.

The truth is that if this were helmed by any other director, the film would have, at best, been an ok effort. With Luhrmann though, there is so much expectation on him to produce the goods; it’s his own fault of course, for bringing such bold and visionary stories to the screen such as Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge.

The vibe he was after was obvious – a Hepburn/Bogart relationship between his two leads, transposed to the outback. As fine an actress as Kidman is however, Hepburn isn’t a colour on her acting palette. Her Mary Poppins-esque accent doesn’t do her any favours either. And as watchable as Jackman is, he’s no Bogart either. Or Grant. Stewart, Tracey…On screen chemistry then, equals zilch.

If that wasn’t enough, the story just isn’t appealing. Brit Lady Ashley (Kidman) travels down under to reluctantly take charge of a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere. King Carney (Bryan Brown) wants to buy her land to add to his cattle kingdom, but Ashley is unwilling to do so when he employs underhand tactics.

This spurs her to hire the roving Drover (Jackman), to help transport her 2,000 cattle across hundreds of miles of unforgiving terrain. And so begins this road movie with meat on hooves, on a cattle drive that feels like it almost plays out in real time. Two hours and forty-five minutes. And you feel every minute.

Just as the drive reaches its conclusion, any hope of the film being over too is quickly dashed, when Luhrmann’s ‘set piece’ war ending kicks in. Talk about cruel.

So, with the film finally over, at least you can look back at it and conclude that at least it was visually appealing, right? Wrong again. Every Australian film from Mad Max to Crocodile Dundee has been a better cinematic advert for the world’s smallest continent. Hell, it looks even more appealing in adverts for Fosters and Castlemaine. But in Australia it looks really... ordinary.

There’s no doubt that Baz can bounce back from this fiasco. He will need to think long and hard about his next project however; the fact that it’s looking likely that it will be another take on F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby, might mean he may have to look again. And the fact that it took him seven years between Moulin Rouge and Australia suggests he has plenty of time to lick his wounds and hopefully get it right with his next film.