Starring: Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski
Director: Simon Wincer
Rated: PG
IN 1986 there were many red faces in film critic’s circles when Crocodile Dundee was damned with faint praise and went on to make $47.7 million in Australia and four times that amount in the USA.
Fifteen years later that film remains the highest grossing Australian film ever.
In 1988 critics savaged Crocodile Dundee II and it went on to make $24.9 million. It is the third most successful Australian film ever.
After Crocodile II, Paul Hogan’s midas touch escaped him and Lightning Jack (1994) and Flipper (1996) were critical and box office disasters.
It is a brave reviewer who tries to predict how Crocodile Dundee in LA will be received.
This time round Dundee (Hogan) is the father of a nine year-old boy and is still running his tours of the bush in the Northern Territory.
Sue (Linda Kozlowski), his American partner from the first film, is offered a job on her father’s paper in LA.
Mick thinks it is a great idea and they pack up son Mikey (Serge Cockburn) and head to the City of Angels.
Sue investigates a film company in LA which seems to specialise in films that are so bad they are not meant to make money.
They are presently shooting “Lethal Agent III”. She smells a rat and, while Mikey is amusing the kids at the Edison Elementary School with tales of the outback of Australia, Mick becomes an unofficial lethal agent on the set of the film of the same name.
The problem with Crocodile Dundee in LA is that it is not funny and not well acted.
It is, in parts, mildly amusing, but the film moves from one sight gag or comic skit in quick succession without a strong sense on how any of these parts contribute to the film as a whole.
Not that the film doesn’t try everything it can, but Mick being streetwise in a strange US city holds no surprises and fewer laughs this time round. This film may be a huge hit at the box office but it does not deserve to be.
