Australia and Twilight: Fantasy Camp Two epic fairy tales lapse into unintentional comedy.

When a 155-minute film kicks off with a Star Wars crawl, it’s hard not to get the feeling that a vomit of divadom is sure to follow. That’s not quite the case with Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, which opens with some background on the treatment of the continent’s mixed Aboriginal children in the early 20th century before launching into a World War II–era adventure-romance-drama that is sure to be described as “sprawling,” “epic,” and “sweeping.”

Boy, is it sweeping. For a good chunk of the film, though, Luhrmann keeps you invested: The writer-director strenuously works to dazzle, enveloping you with wide-angle shots of dusty vistas, indigenous mystics, and the pretty star power of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman as they herd cattle, overthrow a bad guy, save an endangered child, and fall in love. There’s a sense throughout that this movie, stuffed script and all, means something. So like a good student, you don’t fidget, and you may not even look at your watch. It’s art!

Only toward Australia’s heavy-handed end do you realize that no, it’s not art. It’s a bloated cheese-fest that will likely bomb at the box office, given that its central premise and target audience are both unclear.

Luhrmann’s late-chapter overuse of the script’s Wizard of Oz metaphor ultimately marks his first film since 2001’s Moulin Rouge! as a grand-scale misfire, though there are hints all along. The first half of the script, credited to Luhrmann and three others, nicely balances the earnestness of its narrator, a half-Aboriginal, half-Caucasian child named Nullah (Brandon Walters, a terrific find) with a playful tone that suggests this period piece isn’t going to take itself entirely seriously.

Most entertaining is Kidman’s Lady Sarah Ashley, an Englishwoman who travels to Australia to check on her cheating husband and his ranch investment. “Mrs. Boss,” as Nullah calls her, discovers that her fine clothes and impeccable posture don’t mesh well with the outback, nor with the “Drover” (Jackman), the gypsy-like cattle herder who’s tasked with welcoming her despite his near-outcast status for socializing with natives. When Sarah’s husband is murdered, however, and she learns that the evil King Carney (Bryan Brown) has been sabotaging his business, the lady becomes determined to save the ranch, save Nullah from being seized by the government, and save Drover from the tough-loner wall he’s built around his heart, as vexing as he may be—at least while his shirt is on.

Between Sarah the Fussbudget and Drover the Beatifically Lit, Heroically Scored Hunk, Australia’s setup has a fair amount of humor and scenes that border on intentional romantic-adventure parody. Kidman’s performance is especially deft, with Sarah’s prissy gestures and attempts to bond with Nullah, who works on the ranch, easily the best parts of the film. (Sarah’s half-assed yet utterly refined rendition of “Over the Rainbow” is comic genius.) Jackman’s main duties, meanwhile, are to be prickly and good-looking—essentially Wolverine on a horse. That their bickering will lead to love is no surprise.

When it does, however…that’s when Australia goes down under. Its Indiana Jones spirit turns mighty serious as subplots focus on the attempts of the Australian government to breed the native blood out of “creamies” such as Nullah, the question of whether Sarah can ever tame the Drover, and the breakout of war. Black magic is a prominent theme (Nullah’s grandfather is a witch doctor), with Aborigines pitted against white Australians—except, of course, when our white heroes put themselves in danger to save them. There’s lots of soaring strings and overemoting, but for a Luhrmann project, Australia’s visuals aren’t that impressive—dust is dust, though starry outback nights are lit with nearly Disney-grade etherealness. You’ll also get a bit tired of hearing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and references to Oz again and again. And when Sarah, after a tearful reunion, tells Drover, “Let’s go home” and he responds, “There’s no place like it,” well, it’s a big laugh in the wrong place.

Twilight is not Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Novelist Stephenie Meyer threw out all the vampiric rules when she wrote the series that’s been described as the next Harry Potter—which would be accurate if the novels were better written, and if the stories appealed to boys as well as giggly girls. And, most crucially, if the franchise’s inaugural big-screen adaptation by Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke didn’t suck more than its vampires actually do.

An actor faces a lot of pressure when tapped to embody a beloved fictional character. But try living up to fan expectations when the guy is described as “devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful,” with a “musical voice” and “soft, enchanting laugh.” Those adjectives add up to Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the heartthrob teenage vampire who falls in love with Twilight’s mortal heroine, Bella (Kristen Stewart). Edward and the other baby Nosferatus in his family are sexier than your typical bloodsucker and more glam—because, ew, who’d want to read about a hottie who weakens or combusts in sunlight when he could just, well, sparkle instead? When Edward insists on showing Bella what he looks like when the sun’s out, you expect something frightening. Instead, he glistens as if covered with Urban Decay glitter. Dreamy! And Edward doesn’t need an invitation to pop up in Bella’s bedroom. He just arrives whenever he feels like it, which is totally hot.

Really, though, Twilight is Bella’s story, and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg does a fair-to-inadequate job translating the novel’s first-person introspection to the screen. Bella is a high-school junior who’s moved from Phoenix to Forks, Wash., to live with her father, Charlie (Billy Burke). She hates the rain and the goofy guys who hit on her but nonetheless becomes friends with the goofiest of the lot, Mike (Michael Welch), and the girl who’s crushing on him, Jessica (the usually bitch-cast Anna Kendrick).

Bella soon becomes drawn to Edward, who nearly busts a dusty blood vessel when Bella ends up sitting next to him in biology class. Later, he’ll tell Bella that he had to storm out of bio that day because he was pretty close to chowing down on her fair neck. But because the Cullens’ patriarch, a doctor named Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), has taught his brood to snack only on animals, Edward cautiously courts the tasty new girl.

The will-they-or-won’t-they tension that’s rather titillating in the book is all but lost on screen, though. Hardwicke’s interpretation of Edward and his fellow vampires is as ludicrous as Meyer’s vision was unachievable. Try not to laugh when you first see Dr. Cullen: Facinelli’s Carlisle looks like an albino mime, as alien as someone with a lab coat and clipboard could look and still resemble a human. And Pattinson’s mood-swinging but “musical” reticence too often sounds like a 12-year-old attempting to deepen his voice.

With the exception of a few evil undead and a game of—I swear—vampire baseball, Twilight’s main action is yearning. Meyer liked her characters to convey their thoughts with expressions almost more often than words; therefore, Pattinson and Stewart do a whole lot of staring. And because Edward’s supposed to be a good guy, he shows off his speed instead of his violent side. The leads have a couple of juicy moments together, and a mini damsel-in-distress arc is thrown in to keep the story from being completely, well, bloodless. When Edward warns Bella that he’s a killer, she responds, “I don’t believe you!” Neither do we.