Kangaroo Jack

• Tickets

Movie Details

• Genre: Comedy
• Release Date: 2003-01-17 Nationwide
• Running Time: 94 min.
• Director: David McNally
• Cast: Anthony Anderson, Jerry O'Connell, Estella Warren, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Walken
• Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer
• Writer: Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Steve Bing, Lowell Ganz
• Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
• Official Site: Kangaroo Jack Official Site

This crusty heap of wallaby poo is the kind of tax write-off that only gets made when someone loses a bet, or someone's dentist whips out his script just as the drilling starts, or someone's "screenwriter" nephew can't hack his job at Papa John's. It may even represent a new low in kangaroo cinema, ranking beneath 1978's Matilda and that Howling sequel with the marsupial werewolves. Opening with a bang (if you define bang as "the most ineptly staged car chase in film history"), Kangaroo Jack sends a mobster's stepson (Jerry O'Connell) and his bad-luck buddy (Anthony Anderson) to Australia to deliver $50,000 of Mob money. Shortly after arriving, through a pouchload of complications, they allow a prankish computer-generated kangaroo to hop off with the money. While O'Connell and Anderson cavort like a community-access Wilder and Pryor, even dusting off the 20-year-old "We're bad!" shtick from Stir Crazy, director David McNally steers every pathetic gag down the conveyor belt of the Jerry Bruckheimer house style--resulting in sub-Three Stooges slapstick shot with all the lighthearted gaiety of a military-recruitment film. For the now-requisite dose of kiddie-movie surrealism, there's a dream sequence wherein breakdancing kangaroos are showered with money while one raps the Sugarhill Gang and speaks in Christopher Walken's voice. It's not as good as it sounds, although it sure beats the movie's other comic innovation: farting camels. (Jim Ridley)