"Australia" is big and beautiful — occasionally a little too much of each for its own good.

Director Baz Luhrmann takes no half measures in this old-school, sweeping epic. It's part slapstick comedy, part family drama, part historical melodrama, part meditation on race, with all of its elements touched by the magic that is very real to the country's indigenous people. Add to that Luhrmann's trademark visual style, which immerses you in the picture with sweeping vistas and gorgeous, vivid colors, and it's ... good. But not great. It's not for lack of trying.

The film, which begins in 1939, is narrated by Nullah (Brandon Walters), a boy of mixed race who straddles the Aboriginal world of his grandfather and the more modern Faraway Downs, a cattle ranch. The government rounds up children of mixed race and carts them off to institutions, tearing them away from their families, a policy that forces Nullah into hiding whenever the authorities come around.

Nullah is at first a bemused observer as Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), an English noblewoman, arrives to check up on her husband. But the husband is killed before she gets there, leaving her with the ranch and 1,500 head of cattle. After a slapstick entry into the Outback, Ashley enlists the aid of scruffy cowboy, Drover (Hugh Jackman), to help her drive the cattle to Darwin, hoping to prevent beef baron King Carney (Bryan Brown) from solidifying a monopoly on providing meat to the Army, which is preparing for what would become World War II.

It's during this part of the film in particular, with the motley crew driving cattle crosses the Outback, that Luhrmann shows off the country's stunning landscapes and natural wonders. Ashley is finally seeing Australia, Nullah notes, and so are we.

Drover and Ashley's trip requires hard work, luck, a little inevitable romance and magic to succeed. The latter is provided in the form of Nullah's grandfather, King George (David Gulpilil). Luhrmann incorporates him and all that he represents easily into the film, integrating the Aboriginal culture and influence.

At this point "Australia" switches gears again. Drover and Ashley begin living at Faraway Downs, raising Nullah. But King George wants Nullah to go walkabout, an Aborigine rite of passage in which adolescents wander for a time in the wild. An argument about allowing it separates Drover and Ashley, the would-be happy couple.

Then it's a war film, with the Japanese bombing Darwin in 1942, two months after Pearl Harbor.

If that sounds like a lot to fit into one movie, Luhrmann's got time - the film lasts two hours and 45 minutes. That could easily have been shortened by trimming some of the silly early scenes, with Kidman overplaying the fish-out-of-water bit (complete with a suitcase full of bloomers popping open in front of a tavern crowd). And although no one is likely to complain about a shirtless-and-ripped Jackman pouring water over himself, it doesn't exactly advance a story that's taking a while to tell.

But Jackman and Kidman grow into their roles. By the end of the film, both are excellent, Kidman in particular. Her stubbornness grows into strength as she fights to keep Nullah, while Jackman must work to save him.

Walters, meanwhile, is wonderful, his naturalistic style perfect for the part.

And if Luhrmann takes too long to tell the tale, it is at least a tale worth telling, shining a light on racism and mistreatment, folding it neatly into a crowded film that entertains us for most of the way.

Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic is the chief film critic for Gannett.