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Crikey! One
thing's for sure, this is no Crocodile Dundee remake.
Nigel Bell
Animal Planet
star Steve Irwin makes his big screen debut in a movie which says
stuff the story, here's the environment message.
The Plot
A satellite blows up resulting in a sophisticated camera crashing
to earth and being eaten by a crocodile.
Two CIA agents
are sent to Australia to retrieve it.
An Aussie operative,
acting for a rival organisation, is also on the hunt.
In the meantime,
naturalist Steve Irwin is making a documentary when he's called
upon to move a crocodile (the same one which swallowed the camera)
to a new location because it's bothering a grumpy farmer.
It's a race
to see who gets there first.
The verdict
The big problem with Crocodile Hunter is that the story element
is almost superfluous.
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| Mrs Irwin
and Joey |
This is basically
Animal Planet on the big screen with some dreadful bit-part actors
thrown in to little affect.
Irwin has a
great presence and fans of "crikey" will have a field
day.
He mentions
the word every couple of minutes (even wife Terri exclaims "crikey"
when being buzzed by a mircolight).
Irwin's to be
applauded for getting his message of caring for the world we live
in across to a cinema-going public.
Irwin doesn't
act in this film, he's just as he is on the telly - plenty of enthusiasm,
lots of pieces to camera, keen to hold deadly snakes and spiders
and, of course, lots of fights with crocodiles.
The grappling
sequences are certainly better than the days when Johnny Weismuller
fought rubber crocs in Tarzan. You do have to question whether Irwin
is gutsy or just plain stupid.
The support
is so lame you wonder whether this has a right to be called a feature
film, although kids will enjoy fights on top of a jeep and almost
slapstick moments when our Steve keeps falling into croc infested
water.
From an environment
point of view, Crocodile Hunter probably does more than a dozen
nature lessons at school would. But then again, you could get just
as much watching Steve Irwin on the telly.
Just why the
film is a PG is a mystery - presumably incase children are encouraged
to go chasing poisonous spiders and gnashing crocodiles.
Certainly it's
not because of the language. The strongest you get is "rack
off."
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