More often than not, the studio behind a feature film will alter said feature in an attempt to improve its tone for a different audience, but seldom does it work out successfully. In the case of Kangaroo Jack, what started off as a PG-13 mob comedy known as Down & Under ended up transitioning into a PG family friendly crime comedy that tried focusing too much of its market value on a CGI rapping marsupial. Despite the film making a modest financial impact and a direct to DVD animated sequel, it was heavily panned on its release and is often regarded as one of the worst comedies in recent years, and for every reason imaginable.
The main premise revolves around childhood friends Charlie Carbone and Louis Booker, who end up having to take money from Charlie's mob boss stepfather Sal Maggio and travel with it to Australia to deliver it to the proper folks. However, they accidentally run over a kangaroo along their way, only for the marsupial to run away with Louis's red jacket with the money in it. While that premise sounds ridiculous on its own, the movie itself has a whole other load of problems. Even though one would imagine the feature put a huge emphasis on the kangaroo that snatched away mafia money, the focus is instead given to Charlie and Louis, who are both horrendously irritating as leads, not helped by Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson's obnoxious overacting. Based on what the film was supposed to be initially, the biggest sin Kangaroo Jack has ever committed is false marketing. Not only does the kangaroo barely appear in the movie as a whole, but its lack of screentime means less comical fun time for a younger audience and more shocking innuendos than expected.
As a result of the emphasis being on the general narrative, which is fairly predictable in its own right, the comedy is another rotten stain on the feature's core. Despite the studio editing out a lot of heavily mature content for the final cut, there's still a lot of disgusting college dorm room banter, bathroom talk, juvenile antics and even inappropriate gropes that make one wonder how any family audience could sit through a film like this. Given that this was a Jerry Bruckheimer production, the expectation of a more mature comedy film would be more fitting, but alas, rapping kangaroos took away the appeal. Not to mention, actors like Christopher Walken, Michael Shannon and Marton Csokas play their roles in such a serious tone that the family movie market feels completely out of place already. Also, Estella Warren is just there as a bland hot trope for Charlie to fall for that happens to be part of an Outback Wildlife Foundation. Thanks to its false advertising and insipid humor, what we have are a cast of characters neither interesting nor tolerable enough to warrant any admiration.
If there's any credit to give Kangaroo Jack, at least the occasional CG animation of Jack himself is really well done, helped especially by an out of nowhere mirage sequence playing Rapper's Delight that was used to heavily market the feature. Despite at times feeling out of place in the otherwise well shot landscapes of outer Australia, the VFX crew behind the red sweatered kangaroo did a nice job giving life to a character that otherwise shouldn't have been the focus of the movie. Also, the soundtrack itself is a nice addition to a horrendously unfunny movie that is in desperate need of musical appeal. Sadly, that's where the positives end, as even those fun songs every now and then aren't enough to make up for the film's sporadic editing that either feels too rushed for its own good or too slow to make use of traveling transitions (with obvious stock footage too). Based on that factor alone, it feels like the filmmakers had no choice but to rush the theatrical version out as fast as possible, which is a shame considering what might've been an at least more understandable premise than what the public got.
It's really sad that the end result of Kangaroo Jack became what it is now, because had Bruckheimer Films just been honest about what it was meant to be, perhaps it wouldn't have been regarded as such a low point in the company's logline. Instead, what we have is a terrible crime caper that pretends to feature a barely existent title character, induces more groans than giggles, features blandly unsympathetic leads and only the occasional charming effect here and there. Unless you enjoy watching movies sardonically, it's best to skip this flick and keep it away from children at all costs. The last thing our generation needs today is to be tricked into seeing a rapping kangaroo comedy anyway.
