Daily Variety, April 15, 2001

SYDNEY, Australia (Variety) - Thirteen years after the easy-going bloke in the Akubra hat returned to Walkabout Creek after visiting America and finding a girlfriend, Mick (Crocodile) Dundee is back, and it's a case of too little too late.

This very laid-back and not very funny addition to the franchise re-establishes Paul Hogan as the tough, goodhearted but pitifully naive nature boy from Down Under and relocates him in La-La Land for some exceedingly mild adventures in the world of movies. Result, which is amiable rather than genuinely funny, should attract reasonable opening numbers, especially in Australia, where pic opens Thursday, eight days ahead of its U.S. bow. Stateside and other international prospects loom as no more than average.

The original "Crocodile Dundee," released in 1986, took off like a rocket in Australia, thanks to the affection Aussies felt toward "Hoges," a homegrown "battler" who had charmed audiences with his offhand brand of comedy on a local TV show.

Less expected was the international response to the pic, which wound up grossing $360 million worldwide. The inevitable sequel came out two years later and generated $250 million worldwide. But Hogan fared less well when he subsequently attempted to play other characters.

It's no surprise that the basic "fish out of water" plot has been retained. Promising 17-minute prologue is set in Australia's Northern Territory, where Mick lives in an amazingly lavish home with his partner, Yank ex-news hen Sue Charleton (Linda Kozlowski) and their 9-year-old son, Mikey (Serge Cockburn). He still works as a crocodile hunter with his mate, Jacko (Alex Wilson), but the reptiles now are protected, so the duo must catch them alive. In a funny and technically adroit sequence, the dangers (and the humor) of the job are vividly depicted.

The Aussie scenes, which make simple fun of gullible tourists and the way the world is changing (a traditionally garbed Aborigine carries a cell phone), get the film off to a solid start, though the screenplay (credited to Matthew Berry and Eric Abrams but on which Hogan himself claims to have worked extensively) is transparently thin. When Sue is summoned by her newspaper-owner father (never seen) to come to L.A. to replace a senior reporter who has been killed in an auto accident, Mick decides to go along, with Mikey in tow.

Sue quickly discovers the dead man was investigating Silvergate Pictures (with offices on the Paramount lot). Seems the small company's productions (the "Lethal Agent" franchise) are box office clinkers yet continue to be produced in seeming disregard for the losses they accumulate. While Sue interviews Silvergate's smarmy front man, Arnon Rothman (Jere Burns), Mike and Mikey explore the city. Most bizarre scene has father and son passing through Will Rogers Park and encountering a meditating Mike Tyson, who gives them a lesson in inner peace. Tyson's appearance is jarringly out of place, and entire scene could be dropped to the film's benefit.

At a Hollywood party (where George Hamilton appears in a rather jaded cameo), Sue meets Rothman's Euro partner, the suspicious-looking Milos Drubnik (Jonathan Banks), while Mick delivers the film's best line, asking a trendy type who is ordering a specific brand of mineral water, "Havin' a drink or doin' your laundry?"

The adventures of these Aussie innocents-at-large continue in a wholly predictable manner. The equivalent of the famous sequence from the first film in which Mick is challenged by a knife-wielding hood comes on Hollywood Boulevard, where four Latinos in a convertible threaten Mick and the newly
arrived Jacko with guns; needless to say, the Aussies are more than a match for them.

The film's depiction of movie production, even at a supposedly marginal production company, looks unbelievably retro, as if the town had stepped back into the '60s. Though surprisingly little is made of the character of Mikey, who is attractively played by the son of a well-known Australian television political journalist, a good deal of footage is devoted to Mick's expertise with, and affinity for, animals, especially a scene-stealing chimpanzee.

Emphasis on cuddly (and some not so cuddly) animals, and the presence of Mikey, indicate the film is aimed squarely at the family audience, where tired jokes such as Mick's reaction when "attacked" by a patently fake giant snake on the Paramount Studio tour might raise a snicker. There's not much of an edge to "Croc 3," and Simon Wincer's surprisingly lethargic direction isn't any help. The mixed Yank and Aussie crew succeed in making both L.A. and the Outback (to which the film returns for a brief epilogue) look extremely attractive, and Basil Poledouris contributes a sprightly score. Main problem remains the underdeveloped screenplay.

Hogan still looks like a convincingly trim, tough bushman (though his face appears less lined than it once was) and, at his best, has charm to spare. But inevitably the novelty of the character has been diminished over the years and there are few surprises, and fewer laughs, to be found in this latest installment.