Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001) - Movie Review

Well, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles probably didn't hit theaters in the way that aging actor Paul Hogan hoped for, as a huge box office success and a celebration of the revival of the series, but when is all said and done, the third movie in the franchise (trilogy?) is not that bad of an idea. You have a star who really hasn't had any box office success in any other movie, yet he is well known to all for his one character, and you have an idea that still has a few original ideas left up its sleeve. Does this third Crocodile Dundee blow away its predecessors? No, but it adds one more entertaining chapter to its list.

As already mentioned, Paul Hogan returns to the character that he made several years ago, this time heading to Los Angeles with his kid and almost-wife as she accepts a job at her father's newspaper. Basically, Crocodile Dundee experiences new things that he has never seen before, although there is an art smuggling plot buried in the film that surprisingly makes for some good entertainment at the end.

Dundee has already been to New York and has experienced some of the 'new' technologies, but several years has passed since then, so there are a lot more new things for him to encounter. He goes from one comical situation to the next, misinterpreting things everywhere. Some scenes are funnier than ever, and some are a little cheesy, but the movie itself is surprisingly no where as cheesy as it looked in the previews. I was pleasantly delighted to find myself laughing at the things he gets into, and the rest of the audience (a lot of families) was laughing along with me. There were times when Dundee acts a little too stupid (he's never heard of Mel Gibson, he screeches to a halt in the middle of a freeway, and he stabs an electronic anaconda through the head during a Paramount Pictures back lot tour), but Paul Hogan seems to be having fun making fun of his Australian self. Of course, most Australians are not as dumb as him when it comes to things like this, but Hogan is going more for laughs than anything else.

The bad guy plot in a comedy like this usually ends up making the movie worse, but here it works fine. During most of the movie this plot is only hinted at in between scenes of Dundee encountering various things in LA, but it takes up the entirety of the ending of the film. Luckily, we get to watch Dundee take the bad guys down in various and clever ways.

I was going into Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles with fairly low expectations, presuming to see lots of cheesy situations and a story that is just trying to milk up some dollars for Hogan. The movie does have some of that, but for the most part it is just another fun segment of the series, and it is nice to see Crocodile Dundee back up on the big screen.

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