Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles

For a brief but terrifying time there in the late ’80s, Paul Hogan threatened to become an omnipresent global megastar of evil proportions, but he at least had the decency to back off and leave us alone after the second Crocodile Dundee instalment, resurfacing only for dolphin kiddyflick Flipper. Tragically for everyone concerned, but especially those doomed to watch movies for a living, somebody somewhere has deemed the formula ripe for another good old flogging after a thirteen-year layoff – and the result is that a planet already plagued with wars and famines now gets treated to Crocodlle Dundee in Los Angeles.

The plot isn’t too complex: rustic bushwhacker Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee (Hogan) lives a simple and happy life in the Australian Outback town of Walkabout Creek, with his Yank missus(Kozlowski) and nine-year-old son Mikey. She lands a job on a LA newspaper owned by her father (the previous incumbent having been killed in suspicious circumstances while writing a feature on the mysterious Silvergate Productions), and Mick and Mikey accompany her to the States.

What ensues, predictably enough, is a less-than-hilarious slapstick/family-flick/action-adventure hybrid in the Indiana Jones tradition, with every effort made to wring as much comic mileage as possible from the inherently side-splitting concept of an Aussie hillbilly exposed to the pace of metropolitan life. Throw in a few daredevil action sequences such as Hogan plunging a huge hunting knife into the head of a (mechanical) anaconda, and you’ve got the general routine.

Aside from Hogan and Kozlowski’s conspicuously being a decade older than last time out, there is practically nothing to distinguish Dundee from either of its forerunners (apart from a general decrease in the physical-activity levels of its hero, which can probably be attributed to his advancing years).

And it isn’t just that the humour is entirely derived from the urban/rural clash of cultures at the film’s centre – many of the gags are exactly the same ones that were deployed ten years ago, from Dundee’s bewilderment at the sophistication of American bathrooms to Dundee’s bewilderment at the existence of transvestites.

Watchable, if a gun is held to your head, but otherwise you should never have any cause to endure this superlative work of art.