Cinema: Australia

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BAZ Luhrmann’s daring re-interpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, married dazzling spectacle with devastating emotion, qualities echoed in the Oscar-nominated musical Moulin Rouge!

Now, the master film-maker works his magic on his biggest canvas yet, paying tribute to his homeland with a sprawling love story set during the years before the Japanese bombing of Darwin.

Australia is a sweeping, old-fashioned epic that marries Catherine Martin’s ravishing production design with Mandy Walker’s breathtaking cinematography – a shoo-in for the Oscar.

The film casts a heady glow as Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman generate enough sexual tension to melt the celluloid.

Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman) leaves behind the finery of the English aristocracy to travel to the Australian outback and confront her husband, Lord Ashley, on the Faraway Downs cattle station, where he spends most of his time.

She finds her husband dead and a huge property in financial disarray, on the brink of takeover by scheming King Carney (Bryan Brown).

With the help of a swarthy drover (Jackman), Sarah decides to challenge Carney’s monopoly by herding 500 prize cattle all the way to port in the face of stiff resistance from her rival’s right-hand man and heir apparent, Neil Fletcher (David Wenham).

En route, Sarah and the drover fall passionately in love, becoming surrogate parents to an orphaned Aborigine boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters), who must find himself while on walkabout with his shaman grandfather King George (David Gulpilil).

As Neil resorts to increasingly drastic measures to scupper Sarah’s bid to reach Darwin in time, even cold-blooded murder, the Japanese prepare to bomb the bustling port city.

Australia is a gloriously seductive treat of supreme ambition and artistry.

Fans of the buff leading man may need a cold compress before the first hour is up as Jackman’s rugged man of the earth enjoys a gratuitous shower in the outback.

Kidman has never looked more radiant, demonstrating perfect comic timing as her noblewoman drinks in the sights and sounds of a country at odds with its Aborigine population.

Damon Smith

DIRECTOR Adam Shankman follows up the global smash Hairspray with this colourful family feature, proving that sometimes dreams do come true.

Penned by Matt Lopez, Bedtime Stories daydreams the possible consequences of a tale, conjured in the imagination, magically manifesting itself in the real world.

All your heart’s desires could be realised by concentrating on them in the mind’s eye.

Nothing is impossible, if you wish for it hard enough.

Having established his fantastical narrative gimmick, Lopez fails to mine the underlying rich vein of comedy, relying heavily on Adam Sandler’s childlike charm to spark the picture to life.

Hotel handyman Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) may not be the huge success he always hoped, tending to malfunctioning appliances in a grand hotel run by germ-phobic Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths).

However, he is a loving friend to one and all, including his divorced sister, Wendy (Courteney Cox), who needs to leave town for a few days and asks Skeeter to help look after her kids, Patrick (Jonathan Morgan Heit) and Bobbi (Laura Ann Kessling).

During the day, teacher friend Jill (Keri Russell) cares for the little tykes and, in the evening, Skeeter takes charge.

The imaginative uncle helps the youngsters drift off to sleep by telling them bedtime stories full of illusion and mystery.

When elements from these stories unexpectedly impact on real life, Skeeter wonders if he might be able to usurp snivelling Kendall (Guy Pearce) as the heir to Barry’s hotel empire and steal pretty girlfriend Violet (Teresa Palmer).

A little Adam Sandler goes a long way, but the funnyman fails to make much impact on this deranged tale of triumph against the odds.

Pearce looks ill at ease playing the slapstick villain and we share his discomfort, covering our eyes when his weasely hotel general manager breaks into an impromptu song and dance number.

Russell Brand is good fun as a slacker waiter, but essentially he is playing a PG-friendly version of himself, complete with rambling thoughts of the day, one of which should be to choose his scripts more wisely.

Damon Smith

BASED on Danny Wallace’s humorous memoir, Yes Man is a comedy about what would happen if one man said “yes” to everything that previously he would have dismissed with a cursory “no”.

Evidently, that air of reckless affirmation – regardless of the consequences – appears to extend to the film-makers, who really should have thought twice about committing to a project that lacks a coherent script or well-developed characters.

Writing trio Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel take a neat central conceit and go nowhere with it, contriving a series of ludicrous vignettes that guarantee maximum gurning from rubber-faced leading man Jim Carrey.

Carl Allen (Carrey) oversees the approval of loan applications at the bank where he works alongside nerdy, Harry Potter-obsessed boss Norm (Rhys Darby).

He is a man going nowhere, personally and professionally, still nursing the wounds of a break-up with his girlfriend Stephanie (Molly Sims).

After a run-in with his best friend, Peter (Bradley Cooper), and former colleague Nick (John Michael Higgins), Carl decides to attend a self-help seminar run by the enigmatic Terrence Bundley (Terence Stamp).

Publicly shamed into embracing the power of “yes”, Carl adopts this radical new code of conduct and miraculously begins to reap the benefits, landing a promotion at work and catching the eye of free-spirited painter and singer Allison (Zooey Deschanel).

However, saying “yes” to everything soon lands Carl in hot water and as he tries valiantly to stay with the programme, he realises that seizing every chance that fate throws his way might just cost him the love of his life.

Yes Man is a pot pourri of lacklustre elements that never quite gel, most notably Darby’s scene-stealing turn as a chirpy misfit who seems to belong in a different movie entirely.

Deschanel’s kooky love interest is adorable, but there’s no palpable screen chemistry with Carrey, who tones down his usual array of wild gesticulations and funny voices.

While the lead character in Peyton Reed’s film says yes without thinking, we have to say no.

Damon Smith