Kangaroo Jack

I was fooled by the packaging. I expected the movie to be about a kangaroo. It was - but just barely. I even thought it would be about a talking kangaroo. It was - but only for a moment. It was advertised as fodder for kids. Well, it tends to remain in the general audience vein with brief strays into light-hearted sexual innuendo. No, here the kangaroo is simply incidental to the actual story which isn't that compelling to start with. It is mostly a CGI kangaroo and not always a very good one. When the animal is actually on the screen it tends to almost be annoying because it tends to come across as a commercial. Sort of like .... meanwhile, here is what the kangaroo is doing. It breaks up the storyline with somewhat lame attempts at the kangaroo trying to be funny. Completely unnecessary. As for the story - it could have actually been a good Mafia-lite film in a way. The resulting revelation about the purpose of the kangaroo hijacked envelope of money was the most interesting part of the film. There are some amusing sequences but nearly none have anything to do with the kangaroo. Why was the kangaroo billed as the star? I don't know. Even as the film ends the kangaroo soliloquies that he is the star and finally gets to performing in the way I originally thought the film was going to convey. By the end of the film I felt somewhat betrayed. I was waiting for a kangaroo that never really happened.

Someone actually wrote down a script for this movie.. they wrote it down and then re-read it trying to improve it. they showed it to other people, they showed it to a film studio and it was actually made into a movie.

Let me re-phrase this so that it impacts you the way that it was supposed to.. some human being made this movie. they came up with the idea of it and put it on paper and actually said to themselves (without laughing) "HEY!!!! THIS IS PRETTY DARN GOOD!!" and other people agreed with him.

im very ashamed of my fellow man.

Two Brooklyn friends (Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson) are commissioned by a mob boss (Christopher Walken) to deliver $50,000 to a shady character in the Outback. The operation goes awry when a kangaroo inadvertently runs off with one of the guys' jacket... and the money. Michael Shannon is on hand as a mob heavy.

"Kangaroo Jack" (2003) is a likable family-friendly adventure/comedy with the typical eye-rolling kid humor (e.g. Fart jokes). It's fun, harmless hokum highlighted by spectacular Australian cinematography and the beautiful Estella Warren as an Outback preservationist. The humorous camaraderie of the protagonists is another highpoint. But the story isn't as compelling as I hoped it would be and the camera never really captures Estella's beauty beyond her lovely face and bosom.

It runs 1 hour, 29 minutes and was shot in Australia and Brooklyn with reshoots done in Los Angeles.

GRADE: C+

Let's get to the point. Kangaroo Jack is necessarily the worst film of all time, but neither is it the greatest. It's not even close. What it is though is fairly humorous, though usually silly.

The story is a bit good at parts, but far-fetched at others. Charlie and Louis were best friends ever since childhood, after one saved another from drowning. One of their fathers was a gangster or something, and the two are sent with a job to deliver the money to some other dude. The story isn't quite a bad one, and does take a little twist. (The twist is related to the job.) The main flaw in the story is that the movie is supposedly aimed at kids. Do you think kids will understand anything about mafia or anything like that?

Despite that, there are other moments not aimed at kids. One of the jokes includes Charlie grabbing on of the other character's chest. Another scene includes a homophobic joke. ("We're having an intimate, non-gay moment.) The film is a bit funny and entertaining, but the farting and homophobic jokes, along with the strange storyline makes it less than what it could have been, but I still enjoyed it more than other films such as The Cat in the Hat, Scary Movie and Dude, Where's My Car?

5/10

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I am very hard on Movies and will admit that this is a Silly kind of movie but it was easy to follow and was in all honesty, very, very funny. Better than most Adam Sandler movies and minus all the language and sexual content that Sandler and others seem to sneak into movies they try and sell to "kids". This is a typical O'Connell role and he plays it well. Estella Warren spices it up and keeps her integrity as an actress in check. She looks good no matter what she does anyway but the movie does not lower her standards at all. It is a great movie for the adults to laugh with and the kids in the theatre were having a blast. Plus, anytime Movie Critics trash a film, the odds are it will be a weekend Number #1 movie and you will like it. It did $18 million on the open and will clear $40 mil easily. Not bad for the budget it was made with. Good Job Bruck... 6 stars out of 10....

Have a great time and don't be to picky or critical. It is a movie about a Kangaroo after all!!