Australians give Australia the flick

Jan 4, 2009, 4:13 GMT

Sydney - Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia is being beaten at the box office in its home country by Kung Fu Panda and five other films, figures released Sunday show.

The 165-minute marathon starring locals Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman is unlikely to stay in Australian cinemas beyond the end of the month, a spokesman for Greater Union told Sydney's Sunday Telegraph.

'It didn't appeal to the greater audience at all,' said Louis Youssef.

The failure of a film four years in the making that was intended to be an Oscar contender is a big blow for Canberra, which put up an estimated 25 per cent of its 150-million-US-dollar budget and geared a tourism promotion campaign around it that it hoped would arrest a decline in international arrivals.

Sportingbet and Centrebet, the country's two biggest internet betting agencies, are not taking bets on Luhrmann's melodrama winning an Oscar because the odds are stacked so high against success.

Twentieth Century Fox remains hopeful that the most expensive film ever made in Australia will recoup its costs - despite slow ticket sales in the United States and disappointing sales since it opened in Australia five weeks ago.

The studio is pinning its hopes on Europeans being drawn to an old fashioned film that parades the wonders of the Australian Outback. It was the top film when it opened in Germany, France and Spain - and came in third in Britain.

'As an anchor of Australia's tourism campaign, this film has not been nearly as strong as the government made out it would be,' said opposition Liberal Party arts spokesman Steven Ciobo. He castigated the government for keeping the exact size of its investment in Australia a secret.

Critics have given mixed reactions to the World War II romance, saying that Luhrmann's his first feature since 2001's successful Moulin Rouge! tries too hard to please everyone.

'Luhrmann needs a complete break,' David Thomson wrote in London's Guardian, 'and I would suggest that he might try to make a new kind of musical, in circumstances where budget limits stimulate invention rather than dragging it down.'