David Allen
"Crocodile Dundee II" (1988) Not As Good As First "Crocodile Dundee" Movie Due To Writing Problems In Part Two.The first "Crocodile Dundee" (1986) movie was a wonderful comedy.The second "Crocodile Dundee" (1988) movie was intended to cash in on the first movie, which it probably did....it probably made much more money for the owners of the movie than the first movie did.Nobody expected the first movie to be a big hit. Everybody expected the second movie to be a hit, and movie owners could (probably did) cut great deals with movie house owners, television presentation people, and sellers of VHS and DVD home videos.The second movie made the owners much richer than the first movie did.But.........sadly, it wasn't (isn't) as good a movie as the first one.Old story with comedies of fame...going back to "The Thin Man" (1934) which was a big, unexpected hit when it first came out, and resulted in many sequels, none as good as the first movie.There are exceptions to the rule that follow-up movies are never as good as initial movies...."Godfather II" (1974) is an example.An example closer to home is the original Johnny Weismuller "Tarzan" (1932) movie which was followed up by an even better "Tarzan" sequel titled "Tarzan And His Mate" (1934 which co-starred the lovely Maureen O'Sullivan (Mia Farrow's mother!) who swam totally nude with her handsome husband, Johnny Weismuller as "Tarzan" in a sort of underwater ballet quite breathtaking to see, and quite tasteful, nude though the dancers were in pre-code 1934 times."Crocodile Dundee" (1986) is sometimes compared to "Tarzan's New York Adventure" (1942) which uses the same jokes......yokel Tarzan from darkest Africa comes to NYC, dresses up in tuxedos, goes to night clubs, rides subways, and doesn't fit in....very funny! The owners of the "Crocodile Dundee" movie series would have done well to pattern the second "Crocodile Dundee II" (1988) movie after "Tarzan And His Mate" (1934) and could have made a much better movie if they followed the "Tarzan And His Mate" (1934) example (BTW, "Tarzan And His Mate" 1934 is honored by inclusion on the Library Of Congress National Film Registry List....best "best movies" list of all, to my thinking...and the first "Tarzan" Johnny Weismuller movie isn't!).Linda Kozlowski, a lovely, Julliard NYC Drama School graduate of both high acting talent and skills (and also very pretty in her 20's in the 1980's) could have done much more than she did in the "Crocodile Dundee II" (1988) movie, where she and Paul Hogan are already "mated" and committed, and there is no more electricity based on courtship and "the chase" seen in the first movie.Oh well........we are "too soon old and too late smart" and so is Hollywood (including the Australia part of Hollywood responsible for the Crocodile Dundee movies).Here are reasons the first Crocodile Dundee (1986), aka "Part One," is better than the second one: Part One (1986) showed a "fish out of water" pretty girl reporter (Linda Kozlowski) in Australia, and then a "fish out of water" Australian comic male hero (Paul Hogan) trying to survive in the New York City of the mid-1980's.Part One worked because it presented non-stop "fish out of water" jokes and situations all well acted by Hogan and Kozlowski.Part One wasn't serious and didn't try to be.Great photography of rural Australia and of up-scale New York City and suburbs.Part One made fun of strange types in both settings, and the main actors did a good job as comics reacting to the strange types.Good enough.The Part One movie was a hit.Part Two wasn't as good because it tried to get serious, got away from the main value of Part One, which was that both rural Australia and New York City of the 1980's are strange for people there for the first time reacting to all they see and must put up with.Part Two was an imperfect action movie, not as good as Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Pierce Brosnan, Matt Damon, Bruce Willis, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Jason Statham, etc. etc. movies, and not as funny as the first Crocodile Dundee (1986) movie.Neither Paul Hogan nor his leading lady from Part One, Linda Kozlowski have the chance to "show their stuff" as they did often in Part One ("showing their stuff" was what made the first movie a big hit).Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski are good actors, but the writing of Part Two just wasn't as good or "on the mark" as was the writing for Part One.Sadly, this is a common story regarding sequels trying to cash in on big initial hit movies, but slowed down because sequels become committee projects always less likely have singular vision of the sort which makes initial hit movies good, but hard to duplicate when committees take over.---------------------- Tex (David) Allen is a SAG-AFTRA east coast movie actor who has written almost 100 movie reviews for both the Amazon and IMDb databases.More about Tex Allen at the IMDb website.See IMDb database for details about Tex (David) Allen.Send emails to Tex Allen to
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