Kangaroo Jack
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Kangaroo Jack is a 2003 American-Australian buddy-action crime comedy film from Warner Bros. Pictures, Castle Rock Entertainment and Jerry Bruckheimer Films, written by Steve Bing, Barry O' Brien and Scott Rosenberg, directed by David McNally, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer with music by Trevor Rabin and starring Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson, Christopher Walken, Estella Warren, Michael Shannon and Adam Garcia. Kangaroo Jack was theatrically released on January 17, 2003 by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Plot
Two friends from Brooklyn, Charlie Carbone and Louis Booker, are forced to deliver mob money to Australia. Their misadventures begin when one of them places his lucky red hoodie on a kangaroo while attempting to snap a picture. When the kangaroo bounces off, they realize that the mob money is still inside the hoodie and are forced to give chase through the Australian Outback.
Why It's Nothing But Chicken Blood
- Executive Meddling: Originally, this film started off as an R-rated gangster comedy with F-bombs and nudity entitled Down and Under. However, producer Jerry Bruckheimer noticed that test screening audiences were responding well to the kangaroo. So, they decided to re-shoot and edit the film to increase screen-time for the kangaroo, dumbed it down to PG and renamed it Kangaroo Jack.
- On a related note, the stars of the film were completely unaware of the changes until after its release.
- False Advertising: Addressing the elephant in the room, despite the fact that the posters, TV commercials, trailers, DVD and VHS covers, and most notably the movie's title highlighted and mostly focused on Kangaroo Jack, he only appears for about 5 out of 89 minutes (even Kangaroo Jack points this out at the end of the film), only 3 of which were in the actual film while the other 2 were at the end of the film. Not helping that he doesn't even speak either, at all; he only talks in the "Chicken Blood!" dream sequence mentioned below. The only words he says other than "Chicken Blood!" are "Love the jacket, Charlie! It's quite fitting to find something that fits my shoulders!", "Nice! How did you know red was my favorite color?" and "Money? Oh, you mean that money!".
- On a side note, the advertisements made it seem like Kangaroo Jack stole the jacket when, in reality, Louis was the one who put it on him.
- Similar to Fame: Lady Gaga issue 1, The title character is not the main character in this film.
- Sexual innuendos in a PG movie. For example, there's a scene where Charlie grabs Jessie's breasts.
- Speaking of this, the romance between Charlie and Jessie is forced. It's not helped by the fact that Charlie sexually harasses Jessie by groping her breasts and forcefully kissing her.
- Boring and depressing story that's not as good as the trailer says it is.
- Bad directing by David McNally.
- Charlie and Louis are unfunny, unlikable and stupid protagonists.
- Lots of stupid attempts at comedy, especially in the scene where the protagonists try to sneak up on Kangaroo Jack, only for Louis to get bitten everywhere by fire ants.
- Poor CGI and visual effects, especially on Kangaroo Jack.
- The tagline "He stole the money... and he's not giving it back" isn't really clever or creative at all.
- The "Chicken Blood!" bit during the kangaroo dream sequence is pretty disturbing for a kids' movie.
- It overuses a lot of Australian stereotypes.
- Some shots are repeated, from Kangaroo Jack hopping to Charlie and Louis laughing.
- Overused painful slapstick humor.
- A very disgusting scene where Charlie and Louis take selfies with Kangaroo Jack's unconscious body.
- Lots of padding, such as the bathroom scene, Louis talking about Jessie's breasts (as stated in WIS #2) and the camels farting.
- The movie doesn't seem to know who its target audience is. One one hand, the movie was advertised for kids, with its marketing being focused on Kangaroo Jack to make it look like a comedy about a talking animal in order to attract a young audience, but on the other hand, it also tries to appeal to adults with dirty humor, sexual innuendo and violent themes that are far too inappropriate to be in what is supposedly a film for kids. The end result is a movie that isn't sure what it wants to be. On a side note, the movie should've been rated PG-13 or even R instead of PG just like another movie that was released in 2003.
- Plothole: If the American gangsters are looking for the two missing couriers in the middle of the desert, why would they throw the pilot out of their car when they realise that they had been his passengers and he might, therefore, have a good idea of where to find them?
- Overuse of pop cultural references to Superman, Free Willy and Scarface.
Redeeming Qualities
- Decent soundtrack from Trevor Rabin.
- Speaking of which, the movie also has a handful of good songs too, like "Hey Baby" by DJ Ötzi, "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell and "Down Under" by Men at Work.
- Some funny jokes here and there.
- Christopher Walken's and Michael Shannon's characters are entertaining villains.
- The credits scene with Kangaroo Jack talking was funny to look at, especially the Looney Tunes "That's All Folks" parody.
- Decent visual effects.
- Frank Welker did good vocal effects for the kangaroos. The voice work by Adam Garcia as Kangaroo Jack is decent.
- The animated direct-to-video sequel, "Kangaroo Jack: G'Day USA", is a slight improvement.
- While Charlie and Louis are unlikable, their actors had good chemistry and felt like friends.
- The film helped people learn about false advertising and might have worked better if it was marketed as an adult oriented mob comedy.
- Speaking of which, had the film not been altered in response to screen tests and remained an R-rated mob comedy, then the final product would have likely turned out much better (though not by much).
Reception
Kangaroo Jack was panned by both critics and audiences alike, who criticized the acting, directing, writing, humor, violence and sexual innuendos, especially for a family film, and false advertising, although the visuals and soundtrack were praised. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a "rotten" rating of 8% based on 115 reviews, with an average score of 3.35/10. The site's consensus states "The humor is gratingly dumb, and Kangaroo Jack contains too much violence and sexual innuendo for a family movie.". On Metacritic, the film holds a 16 out of 100 based 25 reviews, meaning "overwhelming dislike". In addition, it is easily considered one of the worst films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, but it was a modest box office success, nonetheless, earning $88,929,111 on a $60 million budget.
Trivia
- In the film's ending, Kangaroo Jack cracks a fourth-wall joke about his almost-total absence in the movie.
- Producer Jerry Bruckheimer added a scene where Kangaroo Jack talks during a dream sequence after seeing the success of the 2002 Disney film Snow Dogs, which used a similar plot device.
- George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Jackman, Sylvester Stallone, Nicolas Cage, Ben Stiller, Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Ray Romano, Scott Bakula, Mike Myers and Steve Carell were all considered for the role of Charlie.
- Eddie Murphy, Michael J. Fox, Will Smith, Ricky Gervais, Rowan Atkinson, Danny DeVito, Mickey Rourke, and Fred Willard were all considered for the role of Louis.
- Ellen DeGeneres, Sandra Bullock, Lisa Kudrow, Leslie Mann, Rene Russo, Christina Ricci, Lorraine Bracco, Julianne Moore, and Meg Ryan were all considered for the role of Jessie.
- Vincent Pastore, Daniel Stern, Joe Pesci, and Robert De Niro were all considered for the role of Frankie Lombardo.
- Tommy Lee Jones, John Malkovich, James Woods, Kevin Spacey, Frank Langella, Nick Nolte, Tim Robbins, Cole Hauser and John LithGow were all considered for the role of Sal Maggio.
- In 2004, the film would receive a direct-to-video animated sequel titled Kangaroo Jack: G'Day, U.S.A!, in which Kangaroo Jack (now voiced by Jeff Bennett) was promoted to the role of main protagonist, thus addressing a major criticism of the first film.