Bran Nue Dae: Critic Reviews

The singsongy score is a mostly forgettable potpourri of folk, reggae, country and gospel poorly lip-synced by cast members whose uneven vocal chops underscore the ingenuousness of characters like the virginal Willie.

The story sails by, mostly unimpeded, toward its feel-good conclusion and is likely to be forgotten even before the final credits have faded from the screen.

The desert colors pop. The songs are catchy. The lip-synching, meanwhile, is always a little off, and the dancing is usually average at best. That homemade quality is part of the movie's charm.

When Australian Aborigines appear on the big screen, it's rare to see them as fully fleshed-out contemporary human beings. That's where this lightweight and enjoyable, if frustratingly uneven, comedy-musical makes its biggest contribution.

The two leads are sweet and attractive, their roles don't place great demands, and the movie skips along happily, if a little disorganzed.

This Australian musical-comedy seems like a project for which everyone involved had ideas but no one had veto power.

Though the film seems to be cobbled together from saints-and-sinners tropes that were rusty in Victorian times, its high spirits are infectious.

Bran Nue Dae is an infectiously joyful Australian Aboriginal musical.

A cheerful and proudly corny musical that's pretty hard to resist if you're in the right frame of mind.

Bran Nue Dae is so cute and off-kilter you may wonder how we ever got along without it.

You have to wonder about the film's almost complete portrayal of Aborigines as dim-witted dunderers, dancing fools, thieves and drunks. Whites fare no better. Does the film explode stereotypes, or reinforce them?

The film is uneven but in a kind of sweet, earnest way.

It's almost impossible not to be swept up by the exuberant fun of this singing, dancing, irony-laced ode to the repression, reeducation and resistance of Australia's indigenous tribal peoples circa 1969.

It's a Bran Nue Dae for Australian comedy. Enjoyable and satirical; a pleasant surprise.

Bran Nue Dae is so spectacularly cheerful and effervescent it has successfully wrestled my practical criticisms and deemed them irrelevant.

Out of left field and Down Under comes Rachel Perkins' musical to surprise viewers, as if a stranger burst into a well-orchestrated song in conversation.

Instead of being a fount of melody, this film is more of a song desert with exactly one memorable song...

Comes off as "Moulin Rouge" at half speed, which is more of a compliment than you might imagine.

Reportedly a popular musical in Australia, though it's difficult to imagine why, Bran Nue Dae is a film adaptation that barely qualifies as either a film or a musical.

The bright colors and vibrant backgrounds ... go a long way in distracting from shortcomings in the story and style of this offhand hybrid.

It's not everyday you see an 'all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing'Aboriginal musical that also boasts Geoffrey Rush as a scenery-chewing priest with a dodgy German accent.

Bran Nue Dae is a kooky, deliriously happy mix of happenstance and broadly-drawn characters who are apt to break into song at any given moment. It's not quite enough for me to recommend, but I'm not unhappy to have seen it.

Soon, whenever someone launches into a song, you roll your eyes and hope the tune is a short one.

A difficult sit for anyone unable to tune into the film's dedication to bootleg turns of plot and characterization, with the whole endeavor starting to feel like a dental drill after the first act.