Sure, why not, I'll watch the fourth Crocodile Dundee movie

It's not like I have anything better to do with my time.

In these troubling times it’s comforting to recall when America has pulled together, looking past our differences for a greater good. Supporting New York City after 9/11, for instance. Pretending that “We Are the World” was a good song. Collectively rejecting Morbius. Discovering all at the same time that Australia was a real place.

Those of you born more recently than, say, 1990 might not realize that, for a very long time, even though Australia is the oldest continent in the world Americans treated it like Narnia, a mysterious, possibly magical place one could only get to by finding a special door. Most of us had never met anyone from Australia, and all we knew about it was kangaroos and as being where the Mad Max¹ movies took place.

Then, sometime in the mid-80s it suddenly came to us: Australia was not only real, but there were people there. We embraced everything about it, in that patronizing, uniquely American “aren’t you darling” sort of way. We tried to make stars out of comedian Yahoo Serious, and commercial spokesman Jacko, whose most memorable quality is that he shouted everything. We embraced slang like “g’day” and “put another shrimp on the barbie,” and drank Foster’s beer. Even The Facts of Life, in its final waning season, got in on the trend, introducing exchange student Pippa, whose sole defining characteristic is that she was Australian.

This was due almost entirely to the success of Crocodile Dundee, a surprise international hit and, to date, the most successful Australian film of all time. Though it slyly satirized American misconceptions of Australians as primitives ignorant to our customs, even though thanks to television most Australians are actually well-versed in them (it’s why Australian actors tend to be good at putting on American accents), audiences overlooked that satire and embraced star Paul Hogan as a cuddly man’s man hero.

Like a lot of 80s comedies, Crocodile Dundee is rife with casual racism, sexism, and homophobia, and includes a scene where the titular character, upon discovering that a woman in a bar has a penis, punches her, to the cheering delight of onlookers. Despite that, the film was praised for its “gentle” humor, and a sequel was churned out just two years later. As all the best sequels are, it's essentially the same movie as the first one, but somehow failed to capture the same magic. Hogan’s follow-ups Lightning Jack and Almost an Angel fooled no one: he may have been playing different characters but they were all variations on Crocodile Dundee, the gruff tough guy with a heart of gold. Following a very public divorce and tax problems that took years to resolve, Hogan’s star fell in America even faster than it rose, though there was an attempt to revive his iconic character with 2001’s Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, a movie I bet you didn’t even know existed until you read this sentence.

This is an extremely labored way of saying that I watched The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee, perhaps the most depressing attempt to revive a celebrity’s career I’ve ever seen, and I watched every episode of The Two Coreys.

I described Mr. Dundee in the title of this piece as the fourth Crocodile Dundee movie, but that’s not entirely true. While it is about the supposedly unforgettable legacy Crocodile Dundee as a character left not just in the entertainment industry but the entire world, it’s a Curb Your Enthusiasm-like take on the life of Paul Hogan himself, now in his 80s (and with a set of terrifying Chiclet-white veneers), and attempting a comeback in the uncharted territory of modern-day politically correct Hollywood.

Written by Robert Mond and Dean Murphy, Mr. Dundee is so worshipful of its protagonist that you might have thought he saved children from a burning orphanage rather than just starred in a once-popular comedy more than three decades ago. Though Hogan himself at least feigns modesty, the script goes out of its way numerous times to rattle off his accomplishments, where characters just casually mention that Crocodile Dundee was once the most successful independent film of all time. Fellow Aussies Hugh Jackman and Ben Mendelsohn are shown singing his praises, he’s still a subject of Hollywood gossip, and even kids today, who are extremely unlikely to have ever seen a Crocodile Dundee movie, look at him with awe.

Though Hogan would rather live quietly in his Los Angeles mansion, both the public and movie producers are clamoring for him to make a comeback. But like his beloved character, Hogan finds himself a fish out of water in a Hollywood he doesn’t recognize (even though he lives in Los Angeles), where film executives do silly things like drink weird juice drinks and hire mincing male receptionists with ponytails. They also suggest a new Crocodile Dundee movie in which his son would be played by Will Smith, and when Hogan points out the glaring issue with this, they’re shocked and appalled. Why, it’s almost as if a white man can’t even say the word “black” without getting into trouble!

Hogan’s harried agent tells him that he’s up for a knighthood (never mind that Australians are no longer knighted), and that he must stay out of trouble. But poor Paul, he just stumbles into one embarrassing situation after another, such as twice blurting out something that’s misinterpreted as racist, or getting caught up in a high-speed police chase, or when he accidentally hits a nun in the face with a water bottle after he’s forced to sing a song from Grease as part of a charity event (oh, don’t fucking ask). It’s not his fault, it’s a different world now, with its “viral videos” and “cancel culture.”

A near-constant, aggressively upbeat 80s comedy score indicates that this is all extremely funny, though Hogan reacts to everything with an expression that suggests his lunch isn’t sitting right. In fact, there are times when Hogan looks so tired and unhappy that one wonders if some form of elder abuse wasn’t happening behind the scenes. Not looking much happier to be there are Chevy Chase and John Cleese, playing alternate universe versions of themselves, and whose expressions on the film’s poster art suggest nothing so much as “Jesus Christ, has it come to this?” Olivia Newton-John, Reginald VelJohnson, and Wayne Knight also show up, but apparently only agreed to a half-day of shooting, and not a minute more.

But don’t worry, everything turns out alright in the end. After helping to capture a car thief, which onlookers react to with fist-pumping joy, the Crocodile Dundee franchise is successfully revived, Paul is once again the most beloved star in the world, and the universe’s balance is restored. He gets his knighthood (it’s mentioned that Queen Elizabeth’s favorite movie is Crocodile Dundee, because sure it is), but of course he declines to appear at the ceremony in favor of seeing his cute little granddaughter in her school play, because he’s just that humble. One almost expects the film to end with Congress holding a special session to vote on allowing Hogan to run for President.

I don’t know that I’ve seen a comedy as drenched in flop sweat as The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee². Again, despite being the star I can’t even blame how deeply unpleasant it is on Paul Hogan. He looks like he wasn’t given a script so much as just told what was going to happen in each scene immediately before filming. He’s a sleepy, uncomfortable-looking planet around which several incredibly irritating moons orbit, including Shane Jacobson as an inexplicably hostile Crocodile Dundee impersonator, and Nate Torrence as a paparazzo whose mere association with Hogan helps launch his career as an art photographer, because he’s just that powerful.

In trying to make a movie that suggests that today’s uptight, image-obsessed world doesn’t deserve an actual living saint like Paul Hogan, screenwriters Mond and Murphy ultimately embarrass him. The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee is a baffling movie, bereft of so much as one (1) single laugh, replacing actual jokes with limp “satire,” though what it’s satirizing is unclear. Cancel culture? Maybe? The ephemeral nature of stardom? Who can say. The movie definitely seems to hate fat people, though, as evidenced by the fact that Hogan’s loudest detractors are significantly overweight. Like its “A man with a ponytail? Welcome to Mars!” gag, it’s a repeated joke so crusted with dust it could trigger an asthma attack.

While trying to get audiences to reappreciate the original Crocodile Dundee³, and presumably generate new interest at a time when very nearly every other 80s film franchise is up for reboot or delayed sequels, it has the opposite effect. Though I only saw Crocodile Dundee once, in its original release, I now regret the time spent on it. But not as much, I would imagine, as Paul Hogan regretted making The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee.

1. You may be thinking “But Gena, what about Mel Gibson?” Good answer, but, born in Peekskill, New York and not moving to Australia until age 12, Mel Gibson is American. And furthermore, fuck Mel Gibson.

2. Not even the title makes sense in context, and only seems to be called that because the screenwriters assumed no one would be interested in a movie called The Very Excellent Mr. Hogan.

3. In fact, in 2018 as part of a Super Bowl ad for Tourism Australia, a fake trailer for an all-new Crocodile Dundee film was released and generated some mild interest, though to date the only person convinced that a real movie is going to come out of it is Danny McBride, who appeared in the commercial.