A mafia crime movie or a children’s comedy film? This movie’s titling and marketing appears to suggest the latter.
Frustrated New York based hair dresser, Charlie Carbone and his best friend Louis Booker, find themselves at the mercy of mafia crime boss Sal Maggio after inadvertently leading police to Sal’s warehouse full of stolen goods. Sal gives the pair a shot at redemption and sends them on an errand to deliver a package (containing $50,000) to a certain Mr. Smith in Australia. While driving through the Australian outback, they accidentally hit a hopping Kangaroo. Believing the kangaroo dead, for laughs and giggles, they put sun glasses and Louis’ ‘lucky’ red jacket on the kangaroo while taking pictures. The Kangaroo soon awakes from its unconscious state and hops fast away with the red jacket and with it, the envelope full of cash meant for Mr. Smith. This will prove the start of their travails in Australia. As they set about trying to locate the runaway kangaroo and recover the money, they are in turn been chased after by Mr. Smith, his henchmen, and Sal’s right hand man, Frankie Lombardo and his henchmen.
Charlie and Louis capture the attention of viewers with sheer chemistry for the duration of the movie. A particularly humorous argument ensues between the pair upon Louis discovering the sum of cash held in the mysterious yellow package, by which they argue in the air plane's toilet while outwardly appearing to be joining the ‘mile high’ club to flight staff and passengers. This very adult joke could be considered inappropriate in a movie pitched as a family movie.
Whilst Charlie was the protagonist dealing with a crooked and overbearing step-father, Louis was a comedic ray of sunshine lifting every scene he appeared in. A lot of his presence was in his facial expressions alone.
Kangaroo Jack was an interesting but ultimately disappointing movie. For a movie named kangaroo Jack with a talking/rapping kangaroo in the trailer, viewers will be left disappointed that instead of scenes prominently featuring a talking kangaroo, it rarely materialised as such. At the conclusion of the movie, viewers are left with a real case of false and misleading advertising. While adults should find this to be an OK movie, there is little to pique the interest of children who would have been drawn in mass to see this movie.
Charlie and Louis’ friendship although very engaging and the story that follows them is interesting enough to follow, it is hard to get past the misleading nature of the trailer. The movie should have been marketed as it is and not as an Alvin and the Chipmunks animal speaking film. I rate it 2.5 out of 5.
Contributed by: Ola Akinya
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