Australia

Saw the movie premiere of "Australia" last night. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised.

There were lots of niggling issues, but not necessarily the ones pointed out by critics and overall it was an entertaining movie. For me the word "crikey" wasn't an issue at all, it was used appropriately throughout as a kind of running gag and was possibly only slightly out of place just the once.

Probably the biggest issues I had was with Baz's constant effort to shoe horn a political issue into the movie in a way that really didn't fit, I'm talking here about the so called 'Stolen Generations'. For me parts of that detracted from the movie, although in the end he was able to use that angle to wrap everything up nicely.

There were also lots of other small niggling issues, but it had humour, excitement, human drama, characters you cared about and some pretty speccie scenery.

Overall, I think you should go see it, it's a big epic movie on an Indiana Jones scale, and I'd almost suggest it's better than any of the Indiana Jones movies (sacrilege to some I know).

Will post at length about some other aspects later.

cheers

Harry