A few reviews

[Gaith]

Kangaroo Jack (2003)







Stand by Me star and Rebecca Romjin hubby Jerry O'Connell recently spilled the beans on this picture for a brand-new Vice feature called "Only the Worst", in which "actors talk specifically and exclusively about the most notoriously bad film on their resume." Some choice excerpts:

It started as a pretty dark spec script [titled Down and Under] about two shitty mafiosos who have to go to the outback. A lot of cursing, a lot of sex, and it was really funny. [...] So we made the film, they immediately tested it, and it didn't do well. [...] And then, a while later, someone called me up, and said, "I guess they're gonna make this into a kids movie and really heavily animate the kangaroo."

... I remember thinking there were a lot of boobs jokes. I guess we were the Deadpool of kids' movies. I suppose we paved the way for Deadpool, which paved the way for Logan. Oh man, please make sure to indicate that I'm joking there.

Given this history, it's understandable that the movie, which features Christopher Walken and Michael Shannon, is not funny - there's only two or three chuckles to be had. But the Australian photography is beautiful, the cast is game, and, at 85 minutes before credits, it doesn't drag. Is it, on the Nathan Rabin scale, a "Secret Success"? No, but it's no Fiasco, either. Which, by his rules, makes it a failure, and I can't really argue with that. Nor is it disastrous enough to be a delicious train wreck. It's strictly meh.

C+

But, oh...

... that trailer.

I remember that trailer.

I wasted a perfectly good 90 minutes just so I could better appreciate that trailer. It is, friends, perhaps the greatest trailer ever cut:



(Well, I found it amusing in high school, at least.)