Kangaroo Jack (2002)
Directed by David McNally
Written by Steve Bing, Scott Rosenberg
Starring Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Michael Shannon, Christopher Walken
Release Date January 17th, 2002
Published January 19th, 2002
Jerry Bruckheimer's attack on the American moviegoing public continues with the release of the talking kangaroo movie Kangaroo Jack. The number one movie in America on its opening weekend, Jack is yet another black eye from a Hollywood community that just doesn't care anymore. They have figured it out, we will go see anything and then see it again. There will likely be a sequel to this movie proving once and for all, this country is on crack.
One of the great things about being a film critic is going to the movies for free. Great because I save money and because I can walk out on any movie at any time and not worry about arguing with the ticket guy over a refund. The movie hasn't started and I'm already eyeing the exits.
We begin with Charlie (Jerry O' Connell) in a voiceover explaining how he met his best friend Louis Booker (Anthony Anderson). Charlie was swimming and began drowning; Louis jumped in and saved him. Twenty years later Charlie is a hairdresser with his own shop that was purchased for him by his stepfather, a mobster named Sal Maggio (Christopher Walken). Louis is a street hustler (does that stereotype bother anyone? Does it matter?) who is constantly getting them in trouble. Louis's latest scam involves a truck full of Televisions that may or may not be stolen. These two characters are brain-dead morons so it's not long till the cops are onto them. They accidentally lead the cops to one of Sal's warehouses where the "family" keeps their stolen goods.
Sal is a little upset but instead of killing Charlie and Louis, he sends them on an errand in Australia. Charlie and Louis simply have to deliver a package containing 50,000 dollars to a man named Mr. Smith. Oh but if it were that simple, there wouldn't be a movie. On the way to meet Mr. Smith, Charlie runs into a kangaroo and thinks he killed it. A clowning Louis thinks it would be funny to dress up the supposedly dead animal and take pictures of it (HAHAHAHA, actually that is funny). Louis puts his jacket and sunglasses on the Kangaroo and the animal suddenly comes back to life and hops off. Not a big deal, except that Louis left the fifty grand in the jacket.
From there, Charlie and Louis mug like morons and engage in supposedly wacky hijinks with a drunk Australian airplane pilot and a sexy wildlife expert played by model Estella Warren. I would say Warren deserves better than this but she chose to be in this movie so it's her own fault.
Where do I begin with the "what's wrong with this movie" portion of my review? What's wrong is that this movie was made at all, but that is a little too general. Do you think that Jerry Bruckheimer is, in reality, some brilliant sociologist and that his films are merely an experiment to test just how far down he can push American culture before we finally fight back? Maybe he is just searching to find the bottom of the barrel, just so he knows where it is. Forgive me, I know I'm reaching but conspiracy theories are the only way I can explain Jerry Bruckheimer without just simply calling him Satan's spawn. I was just trying to be nice.
What do you think the pitch meeting for this movie was? It was probably something like:
Idiot studio exec #1 "I think the Kangaroo should talk"
Idiot studio exec #2 "That's Brilliant, call Jerry Bruckheimer".
Christopher Walken, why are you in this movie! Walken plays a stereotypical mob boss. Meanwhile, Italians are protesting the Soprano's yet not one word in protest of the goomba stereotypes of this film.
As for Anthony Anderson's character, a black street hustler simply playing the buffoon opposite the white lead character, how does Jerry Bruckheimer get away with such a blatantly stereotypical character and the makers of Barbershop get protested?
You may wonder why I ever sat through this film if I knew it was going to suck? It's simple, this is a movie review website and at the time of this review Kangaroo Jack was the number one movie in America. If this were a straight-to-video movie, we could ignore it, but with $17 million in box office receipts, someone on this site had to see and write about and no one else was as brave or crazy as I was. (Ed. Note - emphasis on crazy)
