Directed by: Peter Faiman
Starring: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski, John Meillon, Mark Blum, Reginald VelJohnson, Michael Lombard
Crocodile Dundee is purely a fish-out-of-water story with some big laughs that gets by on the sheer charm of Paul Hogan, who plays the friendly, outgoing Australian Mick Dundee. He is brought to New York from the Outback by New York Times reporter Sue Charlton (Kozlowski), who flies to Australia to do a feature on this man who wrestled with a crocodile and lived to tell about it. The first 45 minutes of Crocodile Dundee takes place in the Outback, with Mick providing Sue a guided tour of the rough terrain. They also fall in love, which likely informs Sue's decision to bring him back to New York.
There are complications, naturally, including Sue having a jerk fiance (Blum) and the New York scene which Mick handles with his unflappable demeanor. When being mugged with a switchblade, he calmly and amusingly declares, "That's not a knife," and then pulls out a giant one from his vest, "That's a knife," Crocodile Dundee was never accused of being complicated or anything but lighthearted. The obligatory scene in which Sue dumps Richard is never seen, but we do get satisfaction from seeing Mick punch his lights out when he tries to make a fool of Mick at a high-priced Italian restaurant. Mick throws one hell of a jab.
The light comic aspects of Crocodile Dundee work better than the romantic ones. Hogan and Kozlowski later married in real life, but in the movie they feel thrown together as a couple. The final scenes have Sue chasing Mick into the subway and communicating through go-betweens since Mick is standing so far away with hundreds of people in between them. Sue tells Mick she loves him, they get together, and that's the end of the movie. Hogan is effortlessly likable to the point that he couldn't play a villain with training from Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro. This helps Crocodile Dundee rise above its formula for long stretches of the movie.
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