Know your target audience. That's where this film missed the boat -- in 2001. This third installment of Crocodile Dundee was ahead of it's time. Because what it was meant to be essentially was a reboot. Thirteen years after the sequel. Yup. Today we get reboots 2 years after a film. Back then nobody even knew what a "reboot" was. There were "remakes" and there were "sequels", but the notion of franchise reboot did not exist.
Films 1 and 2 were about a kick-a(ss) 80's kinda guy who took no s hite but also didn't go around starting s hite. And a world full of 80's kinda values, and 80's kinda women. Those films were a mix of gags and action -- especially CD2, which is 90% action.
Film 3 replays many of the gags from the first films... and exploits many of the same charm moments. And in it, Mick comes off as a much softer character. At the time, people said Hogan looked old. Well, I just watched all three films back to back and he didn't look much older in the third than the first. At the time of the first movie he was already almost 50! Fact is that the script was softer. There was no wrestling crocodiles. No hanging off the ledges of buildings. At one point in a chase, he slams a door on a guy (this is a repeat gag from CD2) and in another action scene he climbs a ladder. I don't think he actually punches anyone (more on that later) in CDLA. More to the point, the film is a societal comedy that, rather than contrasting the bumpkin with the go-go Manhattanite, it contrasted the manly man with the LA uber chic. To be a manly man in 2001, you didn't have to slash up muggers with a 10 inch knife. You just had to have the instinct and courage to not care what other people thought of you. i have a feeling a lot of that came from Hogan and his co-star/wife's experience and attitudes "milling" in Hollywood since the first movies. Now that the farce that is Hollywood glitteratti has been laid bear by the cultural phenomena of twitter and Instagram, the joke with George Hamilton about coffee colonics is funny. In 2001 -- I saw it in the theater's then as a college student -- I just didn't get that joke. I went to see Mick Dundee swing around like a super hero, and instead it was an entire film of him being a normal guy -- a particularly fit septagenarian who could easily pass for 40 -- but a normal guy nonetheless.
There are a few abrupt cuts in the film and some not-so-tactful cases of product placement. The fast food bit doesn't work mainly because rather than use an obscure LA burger chain, they used a big chain. The Subaru outback... well, of course we know that's what Crocodile Dundee would drive in the bush, but to fit the theme of being out-of-place, we'd rather seem him rambling along in an old Land Cruiser. In fact it could have been a great joke in 2001 for him to be driving along in an international scout making lots of smoke, and the roads filled with Priuses, and he'd say something like "I got to get rid of this car - it's got to be causing all this smog", and then he gets the Outback and the highway is now full of giant H1's / Range Rovers and Excursions. Lack of thoughtfulness in the writing does cheapen the film. But it's more introspective and socially in tune with the things people find ridiculous. At that time, those things were mostly in LA I guess, but now that they've infected wholesale American culture, the social jokes are funnier. Making fun of the clapper, though, is still just stale, lazy writing. And it also suffers from a bit of political-correctness itself.
You see, sometime between 1988, when every boy got into at least one brawl where he had to use his fists on the playground that ended with a trip to the principal and some detention, and 2001, where every playground brawl in the schoolyard was a scandalous case of life-destorying bullying, and every boy who used his fists was doomed to grow up to become an evil war monger destined to kill women and babies in the jungles of Vietnam like their fathers... and every mother in America was out to keep that from happening... the use of the fist became more evil than "fantasy" violence with guns. Yup, the lawyers had their way. Every individual got the imaginary bubble which cannot be invaded without being sued. The final scene is an outright recognition of that fact, maybe because somewhere in the script editing process the exact point was made: you can't have a character go around punching people who insult him. You also can't show women as sexual objects. You can't show homosexuals in a negative light. And so on. Which brings me back to one of the points about why this film was panned in 2001. What was the biggest action film of 2001 (excluding Harry Potter and LOTR -- which were fantasy not live-action). The answer, surprisingly, is Rush Hour 2, in which there is more punching and kicking than probably all 3 Crocodile Dundee films. But it was used as perfect punctuation for a real no s(hite) guy standing up for himself/his woman / people in general. Whereas in Rush Hour 2 is was to showcase martial arts skills that most humans can't do even if they trained for years. On the other hand, 2001 also gave us "Joe Somebody" which tackled the phenomena of mind-neutered men head on. What audiences and critics were really saying when they complained about CD3 was that they had paid their money to escape out of the world of male-mind-neutering, and there just wasn't enough tough-as -leather moments in the script. There are a few "tough-as-leather is out of place" moments. And the protagonist recognizes that in the film, which makes him seem old, even if he doesn't actually look much older than he did 13 years earlier.
Films 1 and 2 were about a kick-a(ss) 80's kinda guy who took no s hite but also didn't go around starting s hite. And a world full of 80's kinda values, and 80's kinda women. Those films were a mix of gags and action -- especially CD2, which is 90% action.
Film 3 replays many of the gags from the first films... and exploits many of the same charm moments. And in it, Mick comes off as a much softer character. At the time, people said Hogan looked old. Well, I just watched all three films back to back and he didn't look much older in the third than the first. At the time of the first movie he was already almost 50! Fact is that the script was softer. There was no wrestling crocodiles. No hanging off the ledges of buildings. At one point in a chase, he slams a door on a guy (this is a repeat gag from CD2) and in another action scene he climbs a ladder. I don't think he actually punches anyone (more on that later) in CDLA. More to the point, the film is a societal comedy that, rather than contrasting the bumpkin with the go-go Manhattanite, it contrasted the manly man with the LA uber chic. To be a manly man in 2001, you didn't have to slash up muggers with a 10 inch knife. You just had to have the instinct and courage to not care what other people thought of you. i have a feeling a lot of that came from Hogan and his co-star/wife's experience and attitudes "milling" in Hollywood since the first movies. Now that the farce that is Hollywood glitteratti has been laid bear by the cultural phenomena of twitter and Instagram, the joke with George Hamilton about coffee colonics is funny. In 2001 -- I saw it in the theater's then as a college student -- I just didn't get that joke. I went to see Mick Dundee swing around like a super hero, and instead it was an entire film of him being a normal guy -- a particularly fit septagenarian who could easily pass for 40 -- but a normal guy nonetheless.
There are a few abrupt cuts in the film and some not-so-tactful cases of product placement. The fast food bit doesn't work mainly because rather than use an obscure LA burger chain, they used a big chain. The Subaru outback... well, of course we know that's what Crocodile Dundee would drive in the bush, but to fit the theme of being out-of-place, we'd rather seem him rambling along in an old Land Cruiser. In fact it could have been a great joke in 2001 for him to be driving along in an international scout making lots of smoke, and the roads filled with Priuses, and he'd say something like "I got to get rid of this car - it's got to be causing all this smog", and then he gets the Outback and the highway is now full of giant H1's / Range Rovers and Excursions. Lack of thoughtfulness in the writing does cheapen the film. But it's more introspective and socially in tune with the things people find ridiculous. At that time, those things were mostly in LA I guess, but now that they've infected wholesale American culture, the social jokes are funnier. Making fun of the clapper, though, is still just stale, lazy writing. And it also suffers from a bit of political-correctness itself.
You see, sometime between 1988, when every boy got into at least one brawl where he had to use his fists on the playground that ended with a trip to the principal and some detention, and 2001, where every playground brawl in the schoolyard was a scandalous case of life-destorying bullying, and every boy who used his fists was doomed to grow up to become an evil war monger destined to kill women and babies in the jungles of Vietnam like their fathers... and every mother in America was out to keep that from happening... the use of the fist became more evil than "fantasy" violence with guns. Yup, the lawyers had their way. Every individual got the imaginary bubble which cannot be invaded without being sued. The final scene is an outright recognition of that fact, maybe because somewhere in the script editing process the exact point was made: you can't have a character go around punching people who insult him. You also can't show women as sexual objects. You can't show homosexuals in a negative light. And so on. Which brings me back to one of the points about why this film was panned in 2001. What was the biggest action film of 2001 (excluding Harry Potter and LOTR -- which were fantasy not live-action). The answer, surprisingly, is Rush Hour 2, in which there is more punching and kicking than probably all 3 Crocodile Dundee films. But it was used as perfect punctuation for a real no s(hite) guy standing up for himself/his woman / people in general. Whereas in Rush Hour 2 is was to showcase martial arts skills that most humans can't do even if they trained for years. On the other hand, 2001 also gave us "Joe Somebody" which tackled the phenomena of mind-neutered men head on. What audiences and critics were really saying when they complained about CD3 was that they had paid their money to escape out of the world of male-mind-neutering, and there just wasn't enough tough-as -leather moments in the script. There are a few "tough-as-leather is out of place" moments. And the protagonist recognizes that in the film, which makes him seem old, even if he doesn't actually look much older than he did 13 years earlier.