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Charlie Carbone [Jerry O'Connell], the stepson of Mafia boss Sal [Christopher Walken]
disappoints his parents since he has chosen to become a hairdresser.
He has also led the police to his stepfather's warehouse of stolen goods when he bungles up an errand for him. To allow Charlie to redeem himself, Sal sends him on another errand: to deliver a brown envelope to a Mr. Smith in the Australian outback. Charlie's best friend Louis Booker [Anthony Anderson] who saved his life 20 years ago accompanies him. They're not supposed to open the envelope or know its contents, but Louis later discovers and tells Charlie that it contains $50,000 "mob money". Driving in the arid outback, they hit a kangaroo. Fooling around with the dead animal, Louis puts his jacket on the kangaroo and takes snapshots. But the kangaroo isn't dead, after all, and hops off still wearing Louis's jacket. Guess where the brown envelop is? Fearing for their lives, they chase the kangaroo.
Shots of the great Australian outback are great—the viewer gets a delightful free ride while
following the action, and is treated to superb computer technology watching the kangaroo dance, rap and outsmart the people chasing it. Editing is good—not a minute of
the movie's 88 minutes can send one to sleep. The script is another matter, though, its humor relying much on double talk and adult humor.
There are two ways to see Kangaroo Jack. First, superficially: laugh at the
flatulent camels and giggle through the jokes, the slapstick, the antics, even be wowed by the high-tech kangaroo rapper.
Second: view it as a surgeon wielding a scalpel to examine tissues. Not all laughable things are funny, and not all comedies are laughable. Because violence and crime are played for laughs in
Kangaroo Jack, viewers of the first kind could dismiss the movie as wholesome entertainment, harmless for viewers of all ages. Nothing could be more
misleading. While the movie says that crime does not pay, it shows that criminals can get awfully lucky, surviving car and plane crashes and other tortures with hardly a
scratch—and even get to live happily ever after without a whiff of repentance for their wrong-doings. There is a gem hidden amidst all that poop in Kangaroo Jack: the
beauty of friendship that knows no skin color.
Charlie is white and Louis is black but they're fast friends for decades, together through hell or high water. If the viewer wading through the muck can see this, he may also see the rest of the film as forgivable movie madness. Nonetheless, it should be watched with an incisive conscience.
[Date reviewed: April 11, 2003]
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