See, Australia is an epic that wants to be a little bit too epic. It's a Western (there's the roughneck who falls for the upper-crust British lady; a group of ragtags end up herding cattle across the Never Never) for the first half, and then it turns into... well, it's not clear what it turns into: a film about politics (sort of?), commerce, love, Australian history, and more.

The gist: That upper-crust British lady, Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) comes to Australia and wants to sell her husband's land, Faraway Downs. She ends up trying to herd cattle across Australia's harsh desert with a "drover" named "Drover" (Hugh Jackman). It's a difficult task, and enough to be the plot of a movie in itself; can they make it? Will they beat the bad guys? And just when that plot is resolved, a whole crop of new problems crop up to hold us through what could have been a second movie. Will Jackman and Kidman last, despite their differences? Can they make a family with the half Aborigine boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters)? Will bad guy Nathan Fletcher get his comeuppance? Will they get to keep Faraway Downs? Will they live happily ever after? Oh, and what about that pesky World War II?

There will be answers to all of these questions, and more, because it feels like Luhrmann couldn't rein himself in when trying to demonstrate the beauty and painful history of his country. Which makes sense in a lot of ways: It's a long, storied history and so probably warrants a long, storied movie. But it could have used a thread that carried through the movie from beginning to end (we tend to call this a plot), instead of starting about one thing, coming to a climax and resolution and starting over. Viewers will be hooked in for the entire first story, but viewers -- like the movie -- might have a hard time finding their footing through the rest of it all.

But there are lovely moments, filled with passion or humor or action. Kidman and Jackman have undeniable, gorgeous chemistry, and Walters is a phenomenal child actor. And the magical cinematography will sometimes bring you back to the Moulin Rouge, and you'll remember you're watching something special, conceived of and brought to life by Luhrmann's singular vision. But it's those many, many more ordinary moments (mostly in the second half) that feel like an epic that could have been made by almost anyone. With tighter editing and a more uniform script and storyline, Australia might have been more of the first, but instead ends up being a little too much of the latter. Which is a pity, since the first half of the film could have made a nearly perfect movie.

Have you seen Australia? Tell us what you think! Then check out our vision of it as a Paul Hogan biopic!