Kangaroo Jack Details

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer focuses on family audiences with this boisterous and likeable action feature. While too lightweight for most adults, its slapdash mixture of cheeky humour, speedily shot chase sequences and dim-witted monkey business should hold the attention of youngsters. Surprisingly, Liz Hurley's erstwhile boyfriend Steve Bing co-wrote the story and screenplay, in which calamity-prone friends Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson are dispatched to Australia by O'Connell's mobster stepfather (Christopher Walken) to deliver $50,000 to a shady associate. When a wild kangaroo runs off with the cash, the pals set off across the outback in pursuit, assisted by wildlife conservationist Estella Warren. Though Warren adds little more than tight T-shirt titillation and Walken's so stereotyped he's almost boring to watch, it's O'Connell and Anderson's spirited banter that carries the film. As for the eponymous marsupial, this semi-CGI creation pops up so infrequently you almost feel cheated.

Simple-minded farce about stupid people that is a familiar mixture of crass and tasteless jokes and broad slapstick; it has all the subtlety and humour of a punch on the nose.