I recently signed up to review the worst of Hollywood's latest dreck as a public service for The Dartmouth's readers -- I watch a few horrible movies, suffer through their inadequacies and write about them to save you from a similar fate.
I'm enduring this task only by lowering my expectations, something that wasn't very difficult for "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles"
The first two words of the title prepared me for yet another dreadful fish-out-of-water-saves-the-day storyline, and the finale of "Survivor: The Australian Outback" had already tested my threshold for Aussie-branded boredom.
It's doubtless that "Survivor" played a part in the timing of this film's release, as American fascination with the Outback has been spurred to high levels -- though not Yahoo Serious levels --by the latest incarnation of the CBS game show.
Only Aussie-philes will be disappointed by Dundee's decision to depart for L.A. within the first ten minutes of the film.
The resulting string of hackneyed Los Angeles (and Los Angeles vs. New York) jokes, though, are an equal-opportunity disappointment.
The trip to Los Angeles is precipitated by a failed croc-hunting expedition that leaves Dundee open to a change of scenery. His live-in girlfriend, Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski of the previous two "Dundee" movies) offers the opportunity when her father's L.A. newspaper loses a reporter and she has to fill in.
Dundee and the couple's son (Serge Cockburn) accompany Charlton to a luxurious Beverly Hills home mansion, entertaining themselves (and only themselves) as she pursues leads on a story.
An encounter on the beach with a roller-skating bikini girl is a microcosm of this film's comedy. She bumps into Dundee, babbles aimlessly about his physique and then decides there must be a catch -- is he gay?
You can hear Dundee's response before he utters it: "Yeah, I'm happy most of the time."
As the girl skates away, Dundee and son gaze longingly at her. "Nice ass," remarks Croc Jr. It is one of nearly half a dozen such awkward rear-gazing moments in this backside-obsessed movie.
Dundee's latent homophobia is another unsettling motif. His ignorance on the beach is banal enough, but it gets worse later when he walks into an L.A. gay bar with a friend, both of them in croc hunting gear.
After greeting a "cowboy" by the door and quickly exiting the premises, Dundee muses that "I think they call them gay homosexuals." Suddenly he's an expert!
The story is also marred by some bizarre cameos. One of them occurs in another bar, a trendy showbiz hangout where George Hamilton is found nursing a martini.
Hamilton, apparently playing himself, remarks on the health nuts that populate the bar. "I say, drink whatever you want, and then flush it out later with coffee." This isn't Frappuccino Hamilton's talking about -- it's a coffee enema.
Of all the jokes that could be made at George Hamilton's expense, they choose a coffee enema gag? "It's L.A.," shrugs the bartender, apologizing for more than he realizes.
Then Mike Tyson shows up as Dundee and son stroll through a local park. Tyson is in a lotus position, and he agrees to show the pair how to meditate.
Yes, Mike Tyson, that exemplar of self discipline and inner stillness, that gentle giant who, according to the croc hunter, "would probably never even hurt a fly." Image rehabilitation, anyone? I searched in vain for Don King's name during the credits.
Meanwhile, Charlton has made progress with her story. Silvergate, a small new studio that has produced two box-office bombs, is acting as a front for an organized crime ring.
Dundee goes to the studio -- in his Subaru Outback, of course -- to infiltrate the operation, which turns out to be smuggling valuable artwork that was thought to be lost in World War II.
This is where the film goes beyond even coffee-enema ridiculousness. As Charlton has it figured, during World War II, a team of criminals evacuated the valuable paintings from Yugoslavia before the area was bombed, and now, 60 years later, the art is being brought into the United States.
Why are the masterminds behind Silvergate bringing the art to the United States at all? And why now? And why did they choose a publicity-attracting movie studio, of all things, as the front for their scam? And why is down-under rube Crocodile Dundee the first person in half a century to figure this out?
The answer is that "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles" is the real front. It's a front set up so that Paul Hogan can smuggle into theaters some recycled "This is a knife" junk that he's kept in storage since the 1980s.
It's a front for an outrageous amount of product placement, especially for Paramount and its parent company, Viacom. The media juggernaut's presence is often blatant, as when the Paramount lot becomes the central setting for action scenes.
But there are subtle touches, too -- at one point, the young Dundee yells, "Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?" It's a fleeting but unmistakable reference to the flagship show of Viacom's UPN, "WWF Smackdown!"
Hogan does manage to make a few pointed observations on pop culture, but these are part of a script that is misguided and confused as a whole. Don't let this review be written in vain -- stay away from "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles."
