This movie, set in an Australian Outback which simply does not exist, employs just about every inaccurate Aussie stereotype and cliché that ever existed as well as a lot more tried and true and tired Hollywood tropes. This movie is obviously intended for undiscerning kids and overseas audiences that don't know much at all about Australia.
The movie centers around an American mum.... sorry, Mom .... and her obnoxious kid who are forced, for reasons that aren't 100 percent clear, to leave New York and travel to Australia and visit the sheep station (although we never actually see any sheep, or cows for that matter) of the kid's crusty grandfather and the Mom's father-in-law. Grandpa is played by Bill Nighy, who is always enjoyable on screen, with the definite exception of this movie. Why Bill Nighy is in this picture in the first place is a real mystery. I mean that are no end of good Australian actors of the same vintage who could have played this part and played it better. Nighy's performance is one of the many irritating things about this movie. His grandfather is so laid back, so laconic that he's just short of being catatonic. Honestly, you just want to shake him. None of the other actors is very good either, to be honest, with the definite exception of Kelton Pell as the ranch hand Jules. Pell is a delight and a joy to watch and it is sad that he is not used more in this film. It would have been a vast improvement. The young actor playing the kid, Ridley, doesn't look set for a long screen career based on this. Still he's young and has time to improve. As a protagonist, Ridley fails to elicit sympathy from the audience. He's a stinker.
Australian viewers, will be gob smacked with the version of the Outback this film presents. There are vast, empty distances as in the real Outback, but there are also wide, raging rivers with deep waterfalls, sharing the space with deep open-cut mines, a large dam, a medium sized town and a suspicious number of clean, well built and well maintained buildings scattered through the desert. The fauna of the area is amazing too. There are no emus or kangaroos, but there are pythons and snakes that sound remarkably like rattlesnakes. Also there are dingoes. Some of them are nasty, vicious creatures, more like wolves, but then there are others, well one in particular, whose temperament and skills make him more akin to Lassie or Rin Tin Tin. To see grown men in this movie cowering in the presence of the last mentioned animal , who looks more like a whippet than a dangerous canine, will make you laugh.
Look, bottom line is this isn't a bad film, but it definitely isn't a good one. The kids will probably enjoy it and adults will either find it wholesome, clean, innocuous fun, or, depending on how well you know Australia, it will either make you groan or laugh. You have been warned.
