Written by: Steve Bing & Scott Rosenberg
Starring: Jerry O’Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Michael Shannon, Christopher Walken
Rating: [1/5]
As we all know, not all films have the same aspirations in delivering quality entertainment to their audiences, wherein they try to cash in on something through any means necessary. We’ve seen some harshly cynical attempts at this but Kangaroo Jack sits atop the list of films that not only deceived audiences through its marketing but tells a story so terribly crafted and not entertaining in the slightest.
Always a disappointment to his mob boss stepfather, Charlie (Jerry O’Connell) tries his best to and after a recent major screw up he and his best friend Louis (Anthony Anderson) get tasked with delivering an envelope to a man in Australia. As they travel down under, they realize the envelope contains $50,000, which then gets lost when a kangaroo wearing a hoodie runs away with it.
Getting to the root of what makes Kangaroo Jack a truly objectionable film goes somewhat beyond the scope of the film itself but it does serve as an explanation as to how we get a mob film involving shooting and all sorts of violence targeted to kids. I say this because I was one of those kids who constantly saw commercials about a movie where the trailer focused mostly on a talking kangaroo within a film set in Australia. Naturally, as a child, I found this an intriguing endeavor but when the talking kangaroo only appears for 5 minutes within a hallucination, many should feel misled by the marketing. Perhaps this tactic could reel people in to tell a fun and entertaining story and we certainly did not get that either.
This film getting a PG rating remains one of the more head scratching decisions the notorious MPAA have ever given where questions need to be raised as to who made the call and if some money was exchanged in doing so. Having a film that includes people threateningly pointing guns at each other, a plot line that involved a contract killer, and a scene where a man sexually assaults a woman he does not know by grabbing her breasts. I’m no prude but the MPAA has displayed a history of giving R or NC-17 ratings for the most ridiculous reasons but somehow this feature was granted a PG rating because the producers needed it in order to draw kids and their families to watch what they think is a movie mostly about a talking kangaroo. Just like I was all of those years ago, many did not appreciate it.
For all the talk about the circumstances surrounding the film, when looking at it the obvious displays itself that this team originally crafted this narrative as a mob comedy film that got circumvented as a family film to place focus on a kangaroo that has some importance to the plot but not enough for it to be on the forefront. The sexual innuendos and violence on display pretty much confirms that, leading to some bottom-of-the-barrel humor. When camels come into the plot, the obvious fart jokes linger for what feels like an eternity. It therefore sums up the issues plaguing this film where it obviously existed as something for an older audience but test screenings proved that not to work and then the reshoots to pivot it into something geared towards children and even then it fails. Nothing about this film entertains or inspires, and as a kid I watched it so many times for one specific motivation: Estella Warren, for reasons that do not need elaboration.
Funnily enough, the most fascinating elements of Kangaroo Jack lies in everything outside of the movie because what we receive within it doesn’t really have any substance. It somehow attracted a cast that included Christopher Walken and Michael Shannon as transparently evil mob members of the family for Charlie and they get left to drown with this material. None suffered more than Jerry O’Connell and Anthony Anderson, who just got saddled with terrible jokes they needed to try and work miracles to make work. A film torn asunder by the fact it does not work in toeing the line the producers wanted to cash in because of a talking kangaroo that barely appears. Nothing redeemable about it at all entirely but I cannot give the lowest score to something that at the very least entertained me at some point in my life.
Films with Josh 
