Bite Me Skippy (Kangaroo Jack (DVD))

Name: wampyrii

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Product:	Kangaroo Jack (DVD)
Date:	27/03/03 (282 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not one mention of Baghdad in sight!

Disadvantages: Everything else.

There are few (non-stoned) people in this world who could think the idea of a kangaroo stealing the mob's money before legging it into the Australian outback with a hairdresser and a slacker in not-so-hot pursuit sounds like the perfect foundation for a hit movie. Few people other than Jerry Bruckheimer that is! Just when you thought this guy couldn't plumb the depths of mediocrity any deeper than he already has then along comes another stinker. This time, he has almost made it into the IMDB's top 20 WORST movies of all time list...#21 and the only way is DOWN(or is that up?) from now on! What the hell was I thinking? Why the feck did I watch this?! Firstly, the name "Bruckheimer" attached to a movie should tell you it's going to be brainless but Bruckheimer making a movie starring a kangaroo, the local mob and one of Hollywood's most annoying bit-part sons could only be bloody awful. And bloody awful it is, heck it's almost insulting to think that someone out there honestly thought a cinema audience might enjoy this!

No, I take it back...it *is* insulting and no, no cinema audience will enjoy this in case you were wondering. The ludicrous plot is basically that two bumbling fools lose the local mob a few million dollars and as punishment get sent to Australia with $50,000 in a brown envelope. Now I'd call that a "vacation" but anyway...they have to deliver it to 'some bloke' for 'some reason' but shock horror, they mess up again when a kangaroo steals it and legs it across country with the loot. Fortunately the 'roo is wearing a bright red jacket so is easy to spot and umm, they chase it. The end.

You may have gathered that the plot is virtually non-existent and you may gather by the end of this review that this in itself is something of an ENORMOUS RELIEF. At least it's over quickly.

Anyhoo, add the consistently fecking awful Anthony Anderson(who sounds like he has
regressed to 5 years old, sucked down the contents of a helium balloon and been placed on fast-forward for the duration of this movie), Jerry O'Connell who hasn't given us a decent performance since Stand By Me and a constant barrage of amazingly misjudged jokes aimed at...well certainly not at kids...and you have the major part of what makes this movie stink. You can add a crap script, naff acting, bad CGI and Anthony Anderson once more as well if you like but I think the aforementioned three parts are enough to kill the movie for most readers. As an adult you'll hate this, as an adult with children you'll probably feel a little aggrieved at the bizarre lack of either judgement or film censory type sanitisation shown here, whilst as a kid, you'll wonder where the kangaroo is you saw in the trailers and you might laugh at the one fart gag if you're still awake by then. This *is* a kids movie but after the homophobic gags, sexual gags, drunken debauchery, racism for kicks, constant unveiled threats of violence ("He'll kill you in front of your mother and let her clean up the mess"..sweet dreams kiddies) you might want to sit them down in front of Monsters Inc. just one more time...

One question above all others will spring to mind quite early on. No, not "I wonder what's showing in the screen next door...?" nor "Where's the goddamn exit!!!?" although both will no doubt cross your mind at some point as well, but quite simply this: "Where's the fecking kangaroo?!?!" You'll see gangsters, not kiddie gangsters but full on Godfather style gangsters(Christopher Walken doesn't tone down his tried and tested mob boss role for starters) and you'll see theft, violence and more morally dubious activity but no kangaroo. Another 30 minutes later(assuming you haven't left yet) you'll still be asking the same question and then wait...THERE! There he is!...There's Jack th
e kangaroo! He's....oh he's dead because they ran over him and oh look, what fun...they're dressing up the corpse and posing with it for photos! Oh how you'll laugh! Erm yeah, OK, you might, no one else in the cinema did.

Of course, Jack isn't really dead but springs back to life and legs it with the dosh allowing our 'heros' to run around the outback trying to put a bullet in his skull with a sniper rifle some 20 minutes later which is the next brief moment you'll see him. Oh...and then he's gone again. Now let me think about how this movie was advertised again...no, I could swear it was sold on the premise of being a fun romp across Oz with a funky kangaroo in shades having a major role? Maybe I'm confusing it with something else...Mad Max 4 perhaps...it certainly has little to do with this movie.

Still it's a comedy right so lack of kangaroo or not the important question should be..."is it funny"? My favourite gag must be the one with the reference to the Australian baby who was snatched and killed by dingos...oh no wait, that's not funny. Someone in the scriptwriter's chair for Kangaroo Jack thinks it is though. How about when one of our heros grabs a female co-star's breasts turns to his partner and says "they...feel...real" for absolutely no apparent reason? Try it at home kiddies, g'wan! Why doesn't Disney have gags like that? Or perhaps my 'favourite' gag was the good old farting camel joke, or the playing with shit in the loo joke or the two guys in the cubicle gag, or the drunken, swearing Australian stereotypes or...or...oh what's the point, the poor examples are endless. In fact, the *poor examples* are all there are, I'm sorry to say I didn't laugh once. I did check my watch frequently though which is saying something when the movie runs for a piddling amount of time anyway. Perhaps they couldn't get much out of a kangaroo steal
ing a packet of cash. Go figure eh? Geez...

Frankly this movie sucks butt. 'nuff said I feel(yes the rest was waffle...you should know me by now). I would say Jerry Bruckheimer ought to be ashamed of himself but it's pretty much what you'd expect from him so I'll say Christopher Walken ought to be ashamed of himself instead because inexplicably he has a role here. I'll assume he has taken out a subscription to the Anthony Hopkins school of show-me-the-money film-making and is taking any old role he is offered to boost the retirement fund, either that or Bruckheimer is threatening to sell those incriminating polaroids of him out on a bender with Nick Nolte again...

The bottom line is simple: Whoever you are, wherever you are - avoid Kangaroo Jack! Don't go see it. Don't rent it. Don't even borrow, steal, download, sneak in to see it after another movie or wait for it to come on TV in a few years time because it is 90 minutes of your life absolutely, totally, utterly and completely wasted! And should your kids get sucked in by the advertising and nag you to take them see it then ground them on some trumped up charge("you have weapons of mass destruction" seems a popular one) until it has left the cinema screens...or at least don't talk your dumb English friend into coming with you against his better judgement because he may never forgive you... ;o)

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