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IT is a compilation of every Australian cliche you could imagine - dusty outback scenes, exaggerated accents, blackfellas, boomerangs, even Rolf Harris and his idiosyncratic wobble board.
Baz Luhrmann's anxiously-awaited romantic epic Australia, the most expensive film in the country's history, had its world premiere - and many critics said it failed to live up to expectations.
With a budget of $130 million and an A-list cast including Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman, Luhrmann's new movie is the most ambitious and hyped film made in Australia. Upon it rest hopes of reviving a flagging tourist industry.
It tells the story of an aristocratic Brit, played by Kidman, who inherits an outback sheep station and has to save it by steering a herd of cattle across the country with the help of a man known only as The Drover, played by Hugh Jackman.
Against the backdrop of the Second World War, the pair fall in love and along the way meet an Aboriginal boy who provides a culturally enriching story of the Stolen Generation.
It is hoped that the movie will revive the country's near-dormant film industry as well as saving the ailing tourist market. But the country's leading film reviewers said it was too long, too cliched, and did not live up to the great expectations.
"Luhrmann seems so eager to trowel on the Aussie cliches, obviously to appeal to the tourist markets, that Australia is often simply irritating," said Jim Schembri of The Melbourne Age. Veteran ABC critic David Stratton said: "It's not the masterpiece we had hoped for."
Luhrmann, who only finished editing the film 48 hours prior to its screening after he was forced by the studio to give it a "happy ending", admitted he felt under pressure.
"Bad reviews are not the most comfortable thing but we have given it our all. We've done our best and now it's out in the world," said Luhrmann, who went $29 million over budget.
Likening it to Gone With the Wind or Out of Africa, Luhrmann, the creative genius behind Moulin Rouge, said he hoped people were still watching it in 50 years' time.
Twentieth Century Fox studio executives hope so too, and have launched an ambitious marketing strategy aimed at toppling Titanic as the highest grossing film ever, making $1.8 billion. They also want it to take home a swag of Oscars.
The centre of Sydney came to a standstill for the premiere.
Stars Kidman and Jackman tripped down the 135-metre red carpet. Kidman reluctantly left four-month-old baby Sunday Rose in Tennessee with a nanny for 24 hours to attend the premiere with husband Keith Urban.
She thanked Luhrmann - her 'creative soulmate' - for giving her the rare opportunity to play a female lead in a home-grown movie, saying it was 'a once in a lifetime film'.
"Baz gets offered everything - and he chose to make a film here using Australian cast and crew and giving it his all," said Kidman, who was to see the film for the first time with 3,000 others last night. "This is a celebration for me and hopefully for this country.
"It's not meant to be the second coming. It's meant to be, let's have some fun and enjoy it."
She wasn't worried about criticisms of her performance because there was life after acting. "I may just choose to have some more children."
The Australian tourism industry, which saw a 7.6 per cent fall in overseas tourists in September, is hoping the real star of the show will be the country itself. It is banking on Australia doing what Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand, or what Crocodile Dundee did two decades ago.
Tourism Australia has invested in a multi-million dollar campaign in 22 countries, including two ads directed by Luhrmann that piggyback off the film.
Australia's Tourism and Transport Forum's Christopher Brown said that even if the movie flopped it would have been "the best-marketed flop the world has known".
