I saw this movie about a week ago and I apologize for the time it took me to finally post it, but honestly because of its length , it is a lot to take in. Unfortunately the fact that there’s a lot to take in has nothing to do with much thought or moral criticism in the movie. First of all, I don’t know why, but I hated the beginning of the movie, it was corny in the way the plane traveled the map to get to Australia and the whole kangaroo sequence was incredibly annoying and not at all as comical as it was trying to be. Fortunately the movie picked up and was much better than I thought it would be after watching the first 20 minutes. I finally walked out of the theater with a sense that I had just seen decent, but over-long movie that tried way too hard to be an epic romance tale, but in a way failed, while with a few changes and some good editing could’ve actually slightly succeeded. 

The movie follows the story of a rich wife of a landowner from Australia who inherits land from her husband the size of Maryland. Instead of selling the land like she went there to do, she instead attempts to trek the cattle through Australia with the help of a new found love interest known as “The Drover” and a newly found half white and half black son. They end up being seperated by war and attempt to find each other again. What bothered me the most was the way the movie was narrated by the boy the whole time during the entire 3 hour movie, where instead we could’ve just watched the movie and figure it out for ourselves. Also, the whole magic aspect of the movie was highly annoying and unrealistic. 

There were a few things I did enjoy very much so about this film. I enjoyed the acting by both leading thespians I’ve always liked both Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman and their parts in this movie sustain my liking for both. The movie was visually fantastic. The whole movie reminded me of the “By The Sea” song in Sweeney Todd. You’d know exactly what I mean if you were to see the movie. The really big criticism I have is its length that wasn’t needed in the slightest. There are movies with a lot deeper and morally important stories that are told in a 2 hour time span. 3 hours was just  a way for the movie makers to make the film look like its an epic oscar contender when its anything but. I also hated the stereotypical way the movie killed off an amazing amount of characters, but kept alive only the important ones. For fans like me of the epic genre, you’ve been warned, I only pray that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button can perfectly pull off the epic tone that this film was trying so hard for.

Grade: C