Crocodile Dundee II

Coming two years after Crocodile Dundee, 1988’s Crocodile Dundee II sees Paul Hogan reprise his role as Australian crocodile hunter, Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee. While the plot is largely forgettable and not really why one would watch a Dundee film, it involves Mick trying to acclimatise to city life in New York when his wife Sue is kidnapped by a Columbian drug cartel.

The enjoyment here doesn’t lie with the story but in watching Mick attempt to navigate through New York City, misinterpreting almost everything around him. It is fun to remember an age where a man coming from a developed country such as Australia would have so much trouble understanding life in another developed country. It is perhaps hard to imagine now in a world with social media, the internet and more TV channels than you could ever want to watch that Mick Dundee would be so out of his depth in New York. But just twenty years ago these things weren’t available and the world was a much larger place.

One of the pleasures of this film is to see New York as it was in the late 80s. While New York always looks beautiful to me, seeing it then reminds me of some of the great films set in the city around that time. Another reason to enjoy the film is the performance of Hogan who is loveable as Mick Dundee and it is not surprising that he eventually went back to the role in 2001 with a third Dundee film.

6/10

... This is a knife!