Customer Reviews

Crocodile Dundee (Widescreen)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I purchased this movie for my teenager and it proved to be a timeless comedy. It was really enjoyed it and we talked about it for days after and about how funnny it was.

It's old (1986) and it's schmaltzy and old-fashioned, but Crocodile Dundee is still worth watching if you missed it first time around. Paul Hogan, fresh from Down Under, is so perfectly cast that it quickly becomes apparent that he's not really acting at all: this is just who he is. He plays a relaxed Aussie tracker who shows an American reporter around his native bush country, then accompanies her to her own turf in New York City. It's the old fish-out-of-water theme, and Hogan and co-star Linda Koslowski (whom he later married, in real life), play it off perfectly.
Pure confection, but also pure fun.

This was one of the more entertaining movies that you will ever see.A news reporter from New York played by Linda Kozlowski
goes to Australia and discovers Crocodile Dundee ably played by
Paul Hogan. She takes him to New York.The show is then on.He is
able to see the many sights and sounds of New York City. His
reaction to some of these situations is very humorous and helps
to make this a very good movie.You are able to recall some of
the humorous moments as a result of Crocodile Dundee and New York
Any time someone thinks of Australia Crocodile Dundee will pop
into your mind.The newspaper reporter-heiress winds up falling in love with Dundee.An awesome movie that you will enjoy.

"Crocodile Dundee" is the entertaining 1986 film that made Paul Hogan, the Australian television star whose tourism commercials for the country that is a continent introduced Americans to the idea of throwing another shrimp on the barbie. This movie follows "the innocent abroad" tradition, in which a naive person from a distant land (or planet) arrives in the big city and experiences the foibles of modern civilization through saner eyes. Besides the Australian accent, the twist is that Mick "Crocodile" Dundee can more than hold his own against the pimps, muggers, and fiances that would make lesser mortals back down or run away.

The premise is that New York City reporter Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) goes Down Under to interview the colorful crocodile poacher who lives out in the outback. He shows her the lay of the land and does a few impressive things, including saving her life, and turns out to be as colorful as anyone could hope. She then decides to bring him back to NYC and unleash him on the unsuspecting population. The New York sequence is where all of the good bits in the film come and Hogan's easy charm and sense of comic timing makes almost all of the bits work. It is hard not to like Mick Dundee and it is not surprising that a romance pops up between him and the reporter.

The only problem is that the on-screen chemistry between the two leads is the weakest part of the film. Yes, I know that Hogan divorced his wife and that in 1990 he married Kozlowski, but whatever was happening off-camera did not translate onto the screen, which is not unusual: just think about "Bennifer." It can be done, if you are Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, but all of the warmth and charm in the Hogan and Kozlowski pairing is on his side of the equation. The result is that the final scene of the film is rather unsatisfying, even with the incessant drumming music reminding us this is dramatic. We are supposed to be caught up in Mick and Sue, but it is the two guys on the subway platform who steal the scene.

Still, "Crocodile Dundee" is an entertaining film about a big kid in a bid city (with a big knife) whose reputation would be slightly more enhanced if it had not spawned a couple of sequels, which deluted the charm of the original. Going back to the outback or putting Mick Dundee in Los Angeles instead of New York is enjoyable, but it is just more of the same and there is never quite as good the second time around.

This 1986 Austrailian Action Comedy was the biggest box-office smash hit of the year. This classic movie is now available on DVD under Paramount's WideScreen Collection Series. Digitally remastered & Enhanced for 16:9 HDTV'S. The picture quality & sound are outstanding!!!! Only extra on this DVD is the Theatrical Trailer.

Starring a little known Austrailian chap, Paul Hogan who became an over night star as this wild character "Crocodile Dundee". This movie has it all; a great story, colorful characters, action, adventure, drama, comedy, thrills , chills and lots of down right fun!!! A family film with panoramic Austrailia OutBack and New York City opposite life styles. This is a great DVD!

Summary: Rich New Yorker Socialite Photo Journalist seeks out the man behind the Austrialian OutBack legend "Crocodile Dundee". When she meets this colorful character she discovers a very complicated & complex pioneer adventurer who poaches Crocodiles and lives as part of nature. Never been to any big city she persuades him to come out of the OutBack and travel to New York City. Dundee shows her and us just what life is all about. You'll love this adventure traveled more than once. Enjoy.

Note: this prompted 2 sequels. "Crocodile Dundee II" is worth a viewing.

A phenomenal box office hit when first released, "Crocodile Dundee" follows the exploits of a trapper from the Australian outback who meets a big city journalist when she travels to Australia to meet him. Raised by aboriginal people, Dundee grabs snakes and crocodiles with his bare hands. He's a legend in the Outback, and inevitably, he falls in love with the reporter covering him. When he accompanies her back to New York City, the real fun begins as Dundee encounters street muggers, drag queens, and lavish hotel rooms. A delightful and timeless comedy.

One of the most frequently used, and most telling, elements of comedy is incongruity, and this is a film with plenty of it. The title character and his adventures should be a sheer delight for everyone, and even the romantic element is so low-keyed that there should be no complaints from boy viewers about "mush."

Paul Hogan, who wrote the original story and co-wrote the screenplay, plays Michael J. "Mick" Dundee, sometimes known as "Crocodile," who (with his more civilized partner, Walt Reilly) runs Never-Never Safaris out of Walkabout Creek, Northern Territories, Australia. He claims to have been raised by the local aboriginies (and does indeed join them, face painted, at a corroboree), doesn't know how old he is ("What year's this?" he asks, when the question comes up), and doesn't know or care what the day of the week is. He "was sorta married once...Went out for a walkabout, I come back and she'd gone." He's a highly skilled outdoorsman (sometimes accused of being a "poacher" of crocodiles) and even seems to have some unusual abilities--he puts a water buffalo to sleep when it blocks the road his Jeep is following ("Mind over matter," Walt says). New York reporter Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski), daughter of the publisher of Newsday, is in Australia doing a series of pieces, hears of one of his recent exploits (slightly inflated in the telling), and decides he'd make a good subject for a story. Eventually she persuades him to come to New York with her, and it's there that more than half the movie occurs, along with all the humorous incongruity. Mick Dundee is every country bumpkin who ever came to the big city, and his frankness, his ingenuous offerings of friendship to jaded New Yorkers, and his reactions to things like planes, escalators, elevators, a bidet, a black chauffeur, hookers and transvestites (when the former offer him "one for free," he says, "One what?"), New York traffic (he shinnies up a light pole at his first encounter with it, and has to be rescued by a mounted cop), and cocaine use are delightfully innocent. Withal, he finds his bush skills not unuseful to him: he brings down a purse-snatcher with an accurately-thrown can of food, drives off a trio of muggers by pulling out his huge Bowie knife and slashing the jacket of the leader, and "charms" and makes friends with a pair of ferocious Rottweilers.

Some of Hogan's Australian speech may be hard to understand, and the sudden attack of a crocodile on Sue (it grabs the canteen hanging around her neck) may scare some kids. But on the whole, the movie should be a hit with all ages. Part of Mick is "for tourists only": out in the bush, he switches from safety razor to his Bowie knife when Sue joins him, and after spreading out for her a feast of goanna (a native lizard), grubs, sugar ants, and yams, he cheerfully admits, "You can live on it, but it tastes like s**t," and pulls out a can. Yet he can't sleep in a bed--he makes up a doss on the floor of his hotel room--and he's careful never to hurt a fellow human being, even when driving off a group of poachers who are killing kangaroos for fun. The first crack in his lighthearted facade shows when Sue's editor proposes publicly to her at a dinner party, and only then do we realize that he's grown to love her. At the close he walks on heads and shoulders across a mobbed subway platform to rejoin her, and everybody cheers. You may well feel like cheering too.

I saw Crocodile Dundee with My mother in a movie theater when it first came out, I was about 21 years old and I liked it and it gave me an interest in Australia which I still have to this day! There are many funny scenes and lines in Crocodile Dundee but I think one of my favorites was when Nick Dundee got even with the drunken hunters. I had this on video but gave it away because it was just full frame and I will replace it with a widescreen DVD, I don't like how full frame is edited from the theatrical version. Well I like full frame only if it is one of those old classics that was made before widescreen was invented or was made for Television.

One of the great things about movies is that every once in awhile the unexpected happens, something comes along that you know immediately is just a bit different and special somehow. Usually it's the film itself, but on occasion-- and this is one of them-- a character will emerge who is not just a character in a movie, but IS the movie. Here, it's the title character of "Crocodile Dundee," directed by Peter Faiman, and starring Paul Hogan as the inimitable Mick Dundee, a rather unique individual hailing from the small hamlet of Walkabout Creek, Australia. Mick hit the big screen in 1986, and from the first moment he appeared, right up through the end of the second sequel, it's been a "G'day" for audiences around the world.

In Australia on assignment for her New York newspaper, journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) runs across a story she just has to pursue. It's about a legendary "local" from one of the small towns on the cusp of the bush, a crocodile hunter who, the story goes, had his leg bitten off by a croc, then managed to survive by crawling, alone, for days on end across the outback. So it's off to the town of Walkabout Creek in search of this larger-than-life character, who it turns out is quite a "character" to say the least. He is, in fact, one of a kind.

After a memorable meeting in the town's only pub (one of about four buildings in the whole place), Michael J. "Mick" Dundee agrees to take her on a tour retracing his steps and reconstructing the famous event where it actually took place. He promises a hard journey through some rugged terrain-- no place, in fact, for a "Sheila"-- but, like any good reporter, she's ready for anything; or so she thinks. And it's the beginning of an adventure she, as well as the audience, will never forget.

Hogan concocted the story and created the character, then wrote the screenplay along with John Cornell and Ken Shadie, after which he turned it over to director Faiman, who did a worthy, if not exceptional, job of translating Hogan's vision to the screen. Faiman, however, is destined to be the forgotten man with regards to this project, inasmuch as he was not only necessarily overshadowed by writer/star Hogan, but he presented the film in a fairly straightforward manner, without anything particularly noteworthy that "he" did that would put his "signature" on it. Add to that the fact that this was the first of only two films Faiman ever directed (his second was the lackluster "Dutch" in 1991); simply not enough to reference him, nothing added to his resume afterwards to make you take notice and say, "Oh, yes, he directed 'Dundee,' too." Still, filmmaking is inherently a collaborative medium, and as they say, a film does not "direct" itself; so credit must be given where it is due, and considering how good this film is, and how well it did at the box office, it points up that whatever Faiman did, he did right. And he deserves to be acknowledged for it.

It's no secret, of course, what really makes this film work. Aside from the engaging story with it's romantic notions of adventure, from beginning to end it has the four "Big Cs" going for it: Character, Charisma, Chemistry and Charm. Let's face it, Paul Hogan is "The Man" as Mick Dundee; he's the guy other guys admire and want to be (whether or not they'll admit to it), and he has the kind of natural good looks, charisma and charm that is irresistible to the ladies (whether or not they'll admit to it). And the chemistry between Hogan and Kozlowski is irrefutable; it's the kind that makes you want to put another shrimp on the barbie. Besides all of which there is an innate honesty about Hogan's Mick that shines through like a 1st order Fresnel light in a London fog. He's laid-back and grounded, with a refreshingly logical outlook on life-- this guy's never going to need a pill for hypertension-- and what adds even more to his appeal is that there's a touch of larceny in his make-up, hiding just beneath that twinkle in his eye and his obvious integrity. You also know instinctively that this is the guy you want in your corner when the chips are down. All of this and more is what Paul Hogan captures in his performance; this is the Mick "Crocodile" Dundee he brings to the screen.

In her motion picture debut, the lovely Linda Kozlowski brings some sizzle to the screen and proves to be the perfect counterpoint to co-star Hogan. Something of an "Ibsenesque" role model, she demonstrates that a woman can be strong and ultra feminine, capable yet vulnerable, and all at the same time. It makes her portrayal of Sue Charlton convincing, well rounded and real; much more than just a cardboard cutout kind of a character that could have been used as nothing more than a vehicle to move the story along. Instead, though this is without question Mick Dundee's story, she makes it her story, too, and it gives the film an added perspective and considerably more depth than what is usually found in light comedy, which is essentially what this film is. And there's a look in her eye and something in the way she smiles at Mick that has an absolute ring of truth to it. You could say, in fact, that Hogan and Kozlowski are the Bogie and Bacall of the outback.

Another invaluable asset to the film is the performance of the likable John Meillon as Mick's friend, Walter Reilly. The part is a true character actor's character, and Meillon does it beautifully. The supporting cast includes Mark Blum (Richard), Michael Lombard (Sam), Steve Rackman (Donk) and Reginald VelJohnson (Gus). A memorable film filled with unforgettable characters, "Crocodile Dundee" will take you to the top o'the world... "down under."

Crocodile Dundee is a good movie with comedy and action and adventure and just highly entertaining and highly recommended! I can't believe that a reviewer is unhappy that the DVD is widescreen and not pan and scan? How could anyone prefer to watch this movie edited and chopped? I'm very happy the DVD shows the movie in it's correct widescreen and not that chopped up pan and scan fake full screen.