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CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES It's been 13 years since the last Crocodile Dundee picture, and the only surprise is that it took them this long to finally get around to spitting out another entry. The 1986 original was a pleasant sleeper, and even 1988's Crocodile Dundee II had its moments, but this latest go-around is sheer desperation from first frame to last. Paul Hogan, whose features have grown so leathery, his body should be donated to a wallet company after he passes on, again plays the Aussie outdoorsman of the title, an amiable bloke with no pretenses and not much in the way of street smarts, either. When his significant other, Sue Charleton (returning co-star Linda Kozlowski), takes a job with her father's newspaper in LA, Mick Dundee finds himself once again leaving the safety of the Outback for the harsh confines of a concrete jungle; the central plotline kicks into gear when Mick and Sue discover that a fledgling movie studio known for producing shoddy sequels (presumably like this one) is actually a front for illegal operations. Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles is such a lazy endeavor that director Simon Wincer (who helmed Lonesome Dove in a previous life) and screenwriters Matthew Berry and Eric Abrams repeat numerous bits from the first film (Mick gets mugged, Mick encounters transvestites, Mick gets confounded by electronic gadgets, etc.) while also turning to such grasping celebrities as George Hamilton and Mike Tyson to pump any semblance of vitality into an extremely tired picture. At one point, Hogan states, I think my crocodile hunting days are over. We can only hope, mate. 1/2
JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes hits theaters this summer, but in the meantime, will a remake of Spice World hold you over? OK, so officially, this is a completely different movie from that Spice Girls extravaganza, but seriously, in a couple more years, will anyone be able to differentiate between the two films? Like Spice World, this adaptation of the comic strip/cartoon series is monumentally moronic at its core (and certainly in its garish presentation), yet hovering around the edges are enough savvy asides and colorful sidekicks to make it, while nothing approximating a real movie, at least a couple of steps up from the numbing no-brainers that have been stinking up theaters recently. Rachael Leigh Cook, a young actress whose combination of limited emoting skills and eerily picture-perfect features makes it seem as if her entire face was airbrushed at birth, plays Riverdale rocker Josie, who heads to the big city with fellow Pussycats Melody (Tara Reid) and Val (Rosario Dawson), armed with the unified dream of scoring a record contract. They get their wish sooner than expected once they bump into two unscrupulous record company execs (Alan Cumming and Parker Posey) who seek to control America's youth via subliminal messages in the music. The picture's satire is hardly revelatory, though there's a running gag involving blatant product placement that ranks second only to the priceless punchline in State and Main as the most knowing comment on the subject that I've seen in quite some time. As the dastardly villains, Cumming and Posey fearlessly follow the less than flattering game plan that the script has mapped out for their characters, while Reid (American Pie) generates almost all the memorable chuckles (admittedly few and far between) as the bubble-headed Melody. She's so thick that (to paraphrase Charlie Sheen's famous swipe at Kristy Swanson) if ever a thought entered her pretty little head, it would perish from loneliness (her best line: If I could go back in time, I'd want to meet Snoopy!).
JUST VISITING Usually when a film is years in the making, that's because it turns out to be a large-scale production that runs three hours and boasts all manner of opulent costumes and sets (think Cleopatra). Yet although nobody's trumpeting Just Visiting as being years in the making, the signs are all there. A movie marquee spotted in the background during one scene advertises Go and The Out-of-Towners, two films released in April 1999. Another scene focuses on a wall calendar that reads, April 2000. And now we get to the actual release of the movie, in April 2001. Considering that the finished product runs a mere 88 minutes and displays all the production values of a small-town Fourth of July parade, I have to assume this one was years in the making simply because nobody involved was too anxious for this thing to ever be presented for human consumption. The glut of French blockbusters being remade as limp American comedies reached its zenith in the late 80s/early 90s, but the occasional straggler still turns up on our doorstep every now and then -- that's the case here, as the 1993 Gallic comedy Les Visiteurs (an enormous hit in its homeland) has been Americanized with the same stars (Jean Reno and Christian Clavier), the same scripters (Clavier and Jean-Marie Poire) and the same director (Jean-Marie Gaubert). I haven't seen the original, but I can only hope it's better than this dismal outing; perhaps the addition of John Hughes to this new version's screenplay was so he could dumb the material down to a level that we simple-minded Yanks could appreciate. The plot, incidentally, centers on a 12th century nobleman (Reno) and his imbecilic servant (Clavier) who both get magically transported to our era; they end up spending most of their time discovering the pleasures of bathroom humor (rinsing in toilets, munching on urinal freshener bars, etc.). 1/2
