Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Two childhood friends — a New York hairstylist and a wanna-be musician — get mixed-up with the mob and are forced to deliver $50,000 to Australia, but things go all wrong when the money is lost to a wild kangaroo.
Kangaroo Jack is a forgettable early-2000s comedy that squanders its mildly amusing premise. The plot is thin and riddled with clichés — bumbling protagonists, mob entanglements, and slapstick fish-out-of-water mishaps in the Australian outback. The acting from Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson is broad and cartoonish, relying heavily on mugging rather than genuine comedic timing. The Australian outback cinematography is one of the film's genuine strengths, offering sweeping desert vistas and vivid color. The kangaroo-wearing-sunglasses conceit had some novelty in marketing but the film itself plays like a standard buddy comedy with little distinctive voice. The ending resolves predictably with no meaningful payoff.