Hopping drab

Right. What’s one to expect from a kids’ flick offered up by sturm und drang-meister Jerry Bruckheimer? If you’re like me, not one whole hell of a lot. And Bruckheimer, who produced this flick, delivers exactly that in spades (and a manned brigade wielding same would be needed here for the extended sequence involving camel flatulence).

While not nearly as painful to endure as last year’s The Country Bears (which also shared the now-dubious honor of featuring Christopher Walken in his continuing quest to debase any credibility his name could once offer to a movie), Kangaroo Jack is an oddly disjointed offering, the limited appeal of which is geared strictly toward 8- to 10-year-old boys, but with a violence quotient that should give any discerning parent pause.

The jerry-rigged plot involves Martin and Lewis wannabes Jerry O’Connell and Anthony Anderson as a couple of New York mooks dispatched by mob boss Walken to deliver fifty G’s to an Aussie thug. Unfortunately, while crossing the Outback they literally run into the titular character with their Land Rover. Presuming the ‘roo dead, they think it would be a gas to dress the critter up with a jacket and shades … which of course backfires. The stunned computer-generated creature recovers, knocks them around a bit, and then blithely hops off into the desert. Of course, the bag of money is in its pocket.

Madcap pursuit ensues.

Full-lipped Estella Warren (Planet of the Apes) drops by as an animal conservationist who likes to take late-night wet-T-shirt showers under oasis waterfalls (Hey, you gotta give something to the old man once he’s roped into taking the kids to this affair). However, if the kids go in expecting a rapping kangaroo, they’re gonna be disappointed. The anthropomorphic shenanigans suggested by the trailer are limited in the actual movie to a dream sequence and the closing credits.

Otherwise, this amounts to a forgettable but painless time killer with sporadic moments of amusement.