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Kangaroo Jack
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is a debacle using its trailer to sell the idea that it’s a
good-natured animal film aimed at amiable kids in the 8 to 12 age
range. In the trailer, we get some cute shots of a kangaroo and a
couple of kids, and we can sense we’ll see something funny.
“Kangaroo Jack” is a debacle using its trailer to sell the idea that it’s a good-natured animal film aimed at amiable kids in the 8 to 12 age range. In the trailer, we get some cute shots of a kangaroo and a couple of kids, and we can sense we’ll see something funny.
The kangaroo, who has remarkably little screen time, is absolutely the best thing about this trashy film that celebrates the art of low-brow humor, a type of humor I actually find appealing.
But instead we get bad retreads of jokes seen a thousand times: fat jokes, boob jokes, gay jokes, corny Australian jokes and fecal jokes, all mixed with some of the wierdest sight gags I’ve seen.
The film is mean-spirited most of all, which makes no sense, since “Kangaroo Jack” is being marketed as a family movie – one you can take the kids to. That would be a bad idea, considering the type of R-rated humor that perpetuates the movie.
The craziest scene in this “family” film is when a beautiful girl is exposed in a wet T-shirt, for no good reason. The filmmakers, in changing the movie from one aimed at teenagers to one aimed at parents and kids, have gone to great lengths to show the wet shirt, but have also glaringly air brushed her nipples out. What gives? The violence in the film also is unnecessary and therefore suspect.
The story is a minor one that serves only to get the hokey dialogue and crude sight gags on the screen. Ridiculously, two friends who have mafia ties, Charlie and Louis (Jerry O’Connell and Anthony Anderson), are ordered to deliver $50,000 to some gangsters in the Australian Outback. The two idiots lose the money to, of all things, a kangaroo named Jack, who runs off with the money in his pouch.
The chase is on as the boys try to recover the funds. Toilet humor ensues until they meet their only hope: the environmentally savvy Jessie (Estella Warren), the one whom the movie claims doesn’t have nipples when she wears a wet T-shirt. Charlie falls immediately for the drop-dead-gorgeous Jessie, and she falls for him, unconvincingly. She agrees to help them find the kangaroo and the money.
The race to find the kangaroo is just an excuse for the lame humor at the heart of the film. Unfortunately it’s not funny, and it’s all been done. We get the hilarious loud farts of a gassy camel not once but more like 10 times. We get all the warnings about how dangerous the animals are in Australia with the characters ignoring the warning all in the name of humor and comedy. Repetition in comedy is never good.
There’s another problem with “Kangaroo Jack.” The two characters are crooks, and in one opening sequence they are being chased by rambunctious cops after lifting some TV sets. Once again, the film seems like it’s aiming at the wrong audience, and since it’s being marketed for the family, it’s important to let them know that a lot of this mess is going to go right over the kids’ heads.
There’s a lot of gunplay in “Kangaroo Jack”, and Charlie’s stepfather, Sal (Christopher Walken) is a mob boss who sends his boys off to do some dirty work in Australia. All of this is disguised as a cute movie with a kangaroo, which is a shame, because it’s making a killing at the box office.
KANGAROO JACK. Directed by David McNally. Screenplay by Steve Bing, Barry O’Brien and Scott Rosenberg. With Jerry O’Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Dyan Cannon, Christopher Walken and Michael Shannon. Rated PG (crude humor), 90 minutes. Now playing at Bay Area theaters.
