Paul Hogan has been Australia’s cultural ambassador to the rest of the world for nearly forty years. He may not hold the title officially, but whenever someone beyond our shores thinks of Australia, it’s usually in connection to either “shrimp on the barbie” or “that’s not a knife”. Personally, I grew up around stories of him having problems with the taxation office, but that’s neither here nor there; as much as he has influenced stereotypes, he’s an icon for a reason, and I respect his contribution to the Aussie cultural identity. Which is why I am sorry to report that his latest film, a meta-sequel to the films that made him famous, is fucking dreadful.
It’s basically Hogan and writer/director Dean Murphy’s attempt at a Curb Your Enthusiasm situation, with Hogan playing a fictionalised version of himself as he gets into various media-fuelled mishaps around Hollywood. He himself is still quite entertaining, with that winning larrikin charm, but that only makes me wish he had better material than he’s given here. It’s a lot of ‘cancel culture’ shit about him getting into scenarios where the media peg him as racist or violently hateful or other such things, taking the piss out of how fickle celebrity watchdogs are. Except every single instance is laid on so thick, and bludgeoned repeatedly on the audiences’ respective noggins, that it’s just repetitive, obnoxious, and can be seen from a mile away.
And unfortunately, Hogan isn’t the only one embarrassing himself by being in this thing. Instead, this turns into a 24-frame eulogy for the careers of faded stars, as Chevy Chase, Olivia Newton-John, Wayne Knight, and John Cleese (among others) show up to basically exist on-screen, with aggressive amounts of spoken praise for their past works. It repeatedly goes against the unspoken rule of not referencing better movies in the middle of your bad one, and all it does is remind viewers that there are far, far better things they could be watching rather than this. Even a background gag about Pauly Shore serves as a reminder that there are better examples of celebrities taking the meme of their personas and running with them.
It doesn’t help that this film was clearly made on the cheap, despite the ‘star power’ on display, as the thing looks dreadful. The car-driving scenes might be the worst I’ve ever covered on this blog, to say nothing of the “spectacular” car chase with Cleese at the wheel, Roger Lanser’s cinematography throughout is barely adequate, and even for a film based on a series of random events, there’s barely any structure to it. With how much it keeps bringing up that the first Crocodile Dundee is “the most successful independent movie in history”, showing off the ugly side of the Aussie indie scene like this isn’t helping.
Every so often, it comes across the germ of a good idea, like Hogan encountering a Dundee impersonator (Shane Jacobson in casting so accurate, it’s retroactively the funniest thing about this), or the sudden running-over of Harvey Weinstein (with a Wilhelm scream sound effect, because of course it is), or a dream Broadway musical number where all the surplus of effort seemed to pool. But between the utter depths of a laugh ratio, the second-hand embarrassment for all the people on-screen, and the egregiously chipper ending that makes me feel like I need to scrape sugar granules off my corneas, I struggled to get through this not-even-90-minute-long slog.
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