Crocodile Dundee (1986)

“That's not a knife. THAT'S a knife.”

Join Ian & Megs for our 350th episode as we leave the Australian outback behind, head for New York City and discover just how far charm, confidence and an extremely large knife can take you in Peter Faiman’s Crocodile Dundee (1986).

Liam isn’t with us this week — he tried telling Mick Dundee that he knew his way around the Australian wilderness. He has not been seen since.

Kev is also absent, having become distracted by the promise of a Walkabout Creek drinking session and apparently forgotten there was a podcast to record.

This week we discuss:

• Mick Dundee as a character creation — Paul Hogan creates someone instantly recognisable, enormously charismatic and almost impossible not to like. But is Mick himself significantly better than the movie built around him?
• Great character. Great movie? Crocodile Dundee gives us an iconic central character, memorable scenes and lines that have survived for forty years — but do those ingredients disguise a surprisingly thin story?
• Memorable moments aren’t the same thing as narrative — the crocodile attack, the knife, the bar scenes, the subway ending. We remember an extraordinary amount of Crocodile Dundee, but does remembering the individual moments make us overestimate the strength of the film connecting them together?
• The movie effectively changes genre halfway through — the Australian section plays almost like an adventure comedy, while New York turns Mick into a fish-out-of-water character. Which half works better, and does the film ever feel completely whole?
• Paul Hogan’s performance — understated, relaxed and rarely chasing the punchline. How much of the movie’s success comes simply from Hogan understanding exactly how much — and how little — Mick Dundee needs to do?
• Sue Charlton is much harder to understand than Mick — she is fascinated by Mick, romantically attached to Richard and seemingly capable of treating both men with remarkable cruelty depending upon what the scene requires.
• Susan, Richard and Mick — this relationship increasingly frustrated us. Richard is certainly not presented as particularly sympathetic, but Sue repeatedly humiliates him, keeps him emotionally dangling and then seems surprised by his reactions. Meanwhile, she also plays with Mick’s feelings while refusing to be honest about what she actually wants.
• Does the romance actually work? Mick and Sue have obvious chemistry, but does the screenplay earn their relationship — or are we simply carried along by Hogan and Linda Kozlowski until that enormously charming final scene tells us everything has worked out?
• The changing comedy of Crocodile Dundee — some jokes remain beautifully simple and effective; others very clearly belong to 1986. How much can we separate the film’s enormous cultural impact from the parts that have aged awkwardly?
• New York through Mick’s eyes — the movie’s best trick might be reversing our expectations. Mick initially appears to be the strange outsider, yet his straightforward view of the world often makes everyone around him seem considerably stranger.
• And finally, whether Crocodile Dundee is the Best Film Ever — or simply one of cinema’s great reminders that creating an unforgettable character and giving him unforgettable lines is not necessarily the same thing as telling an unforgettable story.

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