Crocodile Dundee




No worries mate.

Some cultural icons are best left in the 80's.

When New York journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) decides to extend her tour of Australia and check out rumors of a crocodile man, she gets more than she bargained for while touring the bush with Mick "Crocodile" Dundee (Paul Hogan). A little bit of wilderness, a little bit of flirting with the rugged Aussie, but whoops, time to head back to New York. Smitten as she evidently is, she invites Mick to tag along with her to visit the Big Apple.

It's a complete one-eighty of a fish out of water story, or croc in this case. This doesn't do the story any favors as it feels perpetually out of balance between the two locales, though that's not the real problem. Even if everything else had worked perfectly, Crocodile Dundee would've still been sunk thanks to the just plain crappy directing job by Peter Faiman. Things that should work don't, and things that don't work often end up just shy of embarrassing. The script is uneven for the most part, but it's the bland, unoriginal, and often tasteless jokes that really keep things from remaining bearable. The romance is also largely absent, as there's rarely any reference to what's really going on between the protagonists. One minute Sue's smooching Dundee, the next her New Yorker fiancée (Mark Blum) with little apparent difficulty, though we all know what'll happen in the end. Crocodile Dundee may have been a popular hit, no doubt reminding Americans exactly where on the map Australia was, but the movie itself is a lot like its music: at times the element is there with potential, but it merely hums and doesn't go anywhere. Still, the ending is kinda neat.

The weight falls squarely on Hogan's shoulders, and his amiable Dundee delivers even when the jokes don't. His accent, honest naivety about the seedier aspects of New York, and especially his big knife, all make him the friendly sort of Aussie that anyone would love to meet. Too bad there's not really any part to speak of for Linda Kozlowski, who's so generic as the "tough" love interest that it would be easy to forget her entirely, that is if she didn't have to keep showing up in every other scene as if she was a lead or something. Well, I suppose Dundee has to have someone to kiss.

If nothing else, Crocodile Dundee turned out to be great for Australian tourism.



-The Gnome