Crocodile Dundee II

Crocodile Dundee II (1988)

Runtime: 111 minutes

Directed by: John Cornell

Starring: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski, John Meillon, Hechter Ubarry, Juan Fernandez

From: Paramount

Sunday night seemed like the perfect night to see a movie I last watched many years ago. The original CD I last saw in 2010 before Saturday night. Now, onto this Aussie adventure:

I realized this was the best time to watch the film, last night soon after the Super Bowl was over and everyone discovered the teasings of a new movie in this series was all just viral marketing for Australian tourism. Whether that will increase tourism to the land Down Under, I have no idea; it was neat seeing Paul Hogan as the character one more time, even if it was for only a few seconds. I watched the first two movies at least a few times when I was a kid, but this one I last saw many years ago.

The plot is not as whisper-thin as the original: there are stakes as Sue's ex-husband takes photographs of a drug dealer in Colombia killing someone, and like a dope sends them to her; they find out so they go and kidnap her. The plotting is not the strongest so I am not quite sure why Dundee doesn't want to work with the DEA on rescuing her, so he does it instead... things happen and the film moves back to Australia. It's not the type of story you want to scrutinize too hard, there's a moment of homophobia and Charles S. Dutton's Leroy Brown is as stereotypical as you'd expect a black character to be that is named Leroy Brown.

Yet I can still say it's fine. Maybe it's nostalgia, or maybe it's me being charmed by Mick and Sue. There were laughs for me throughout, the score from Peter Best was once again good and like in the first, the cinematography from Russell Boyd was quite solid. Plus it was amusing seeing how Dundee dispatched of the villain and his henchmen-including Luis Guzman-in his backyard. But the most amusing for me was the “street gang” that helps out Mick. I remembered the moment with the knife and that guy's Mohawk, and them making animal noises as a distraction.

Yet the gang itself... Kali's gang in that much-derided episode of Stranger Things' second season was more believable than these goofballs. Most of them are pretty white and look like dorks. It was probably for the best it was not an ethnic group of people as the implications would probably be pretty bad, but their lair is like a New Wave club just threw up. It is too silly for me to be grievously offended; a big help is that this was the first time I ever remembered hearing Iggy Pop's excellent version of Real Wild Child (Wild One).

Australians-especially younger ones-may roll their eyes at the Crocodile Dundee character, “That's not a knife... THAT is a knife”, and all the rest. For me, it was nice nostalgia seeing this and the original the past two nights, as it reminded me of the time when those two movies were very popular and Australia fever swept the country in the latter half of the 80's. One day I'd love to make the LONG flight to that country and spend a few weeks there. It probably won't happen so instead I'll settle for watching old films like these.