Review by Neil Pasricha View This Trailer In the trailer for Kangaroo Jack, we are blessed with the premise of an enormously fat black guy (Anthony Anderson) in the role of an enormously fat fictional guy (Louis) who enlists the help of a skinny white guy (Charlie) played by a skinny white actor (Jerry O'Connell) to deliver a bunch of money to Australia (Oceania). The Kangaroo Jack trailer challenges us with an interesting hypothesis: What if Hollywood scientists were to put the soul of Chris Farley into the body of an equally fat black man, and make him just as obnoxious? Anthony Anderson rises to the challenge like an Olympian, making funny faces, breaking everything he is remotely close to, and breaking things he is remotely close to while making funny faces. In another parallel to the late Chris Farley, Anderson serves as the dignity-free target of a seemingly endless stream of jokes about his enormous weight. When Louis dangles from a rope at the edge of a cliff, O'Connell quips: "You have really got to cut back on that pie!" Ah ha ha. Yes. I can only imagine the final take of that comedic tour de force -- O'Donnell finally nailing the precise delivery needed as sweat drips from his brow. Finally, sixty takes later, the director embraces him. "It's perfect," he soothes. "It's in the can, Jerry. It's all up there on the screen, man." The crew explodes in a fury of applause. O'Donnell collapses, spent. Other rib-cracking fat jokes O'Donnell "nails" in the trailer: [while struggling to give Louis a piggy-back around Aires Rock] "You should eat less ice cream than you are now, you enormous fat man!" [when Louis is sleeping on the top bunk, which is sagging into Charlie's face on the bottom bunk]: "May I suggest losing some weight through dieting, as you are humorous to myself and others when you do not do so!" [when Louis steps on a scale and breaks it, causing springs and dials to fly everywhere] "You are a very fat person." As the trailer for Kangaroo Jack progresses, we are dragged (unwillingly, and against our better judgment) into the story. Once there, we are given a rough outline of the hilarity to follow through four quick scenes that have Louis crying and spitting out details to an unnervingly relaxed Jerry O'Connell, who stands by doing what Jerry O'Connell does best: Not talking. For the benefit of those of you not eager to see the film (at a glance, all of you), let me transcribe the rundown of this montage for you, directly from the trailer: Scene 1: "The kangaroo got the money!" Scene 2: "I put the money in the jacket!" Scene 3: "And the jacket on the kangaroo!" Scene 4: "And now he hopping away!" Personally, Scenes One, Two, and Four look fine to me (well, as fine as can be expected). The kangaroo got the money; yes, we know that. And that's because Louis put the money in the jacket, right, right -- we knew that too. And now the kangaroo is hopping away, which makes sense, since kangaroos tend to do that. But look at scene Three. I pause now for emphasis. After Louis put the money in the jacket, he then PUTS THE JACKET ON THE KANGAROO. Again, allow me to pause for emphasis. I feel it's necessary. Louis, using all of his available faculties, decided that putting a flimsy red windbreaker full of money on a kangaroo hopping by was a good idea. A good idea. I realize that this gesture is no doubt critical to developing the premise of the rest of the film; still, it's an enormously big stretch, even for such an enormously stretched actor. I can picture Louis explaining a similar shenanigans-fueled situation in Kangaroo Jack's sequel, Pelican Jack: "Charlie! I wrestled a pelican to the sand, beat him senseless and then force-fed him all the valuable diamonds I was supposed to keep safe in the jewel case you gave me! But now he's flying away!" Jerry O'Connell: "LOOOOO-ISSSSSS!" Luckily (cough), the ridiculousness continues, as our heroes immediately rent a plane and then just as immediately crash it into the ground five seconds later. Now, I don't know how much a plane costs -- but they did say that the kangaroo only has $50,000 on it. At what point do they cut their losses here? I mean, food and shelter in the desert alone would probably set them back a couple grand. Throw in a crumpled airplane and this trip's in the red before it even leaves the hangar. That doesn't even include the health bills associated with getting kicked in the face by a kangaroo several hundred times over a two-week period (of which we get to see every kick to the face of Jerry O'Connell in the trailer, in graphic detail). Like an ADD-afflicted child, the trailer then shows us a whole bucketload of scenes from the movie in really quick flashes. There are about twenty scenes here, and each of them last about a hundredth of a second. Are they supposed to make us want to see the movie more? I sincerely hope not. I'm not sure the target audience can get too attached to a subliminal snapshot of Jerry O'Donnell scowling like he just swallowed a walnut, or a blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse of Anthony Anderson using his Hawaiian shirt as a working parachute. After all this -- the bad fat jokes, the shoddy plot explanation, the ridiculous ridiculosity, and the rapid-fire series of scenes that make no sense -- the first 90% of this trailer is actually an unrivalled cinematic masterpiece that thrills and chills its audience, compared to the final 10% of the trailer (what I've dubbed in my notes under the shorthand "poo"). The end of the trailer for Kangaroo Jack is, unfortunately, the most incredibly botched attempt at hooking an audience I've ever seen. The final tease, after the movie's credits and release date are shown, involves this, and this only: Our kangaroo returns on screen... And starts rapping. My guess on how this scene got added in: The digital animation company wanted to "flex its muscle" and really push their services by developing an additional scene, at no extra charge, which showed how realistic their rendering can be. After all, there's nothing more realistic than a sunglasses-wearing kangaroo rapping to the camera like a West-side homie, is there? Am I right? The Best Boy grip, tired after a delayed and extended production schedule, took out his frustration on the producers of the movie by stapling this scene onto the end of the reel just seconds before it was mailed for release. Director David McNally made the final call on this scene, after filling up on a big dinner of carpet remnants and aviation fuel. Now please -- tell everyone you know not to see this movie, won't you? Come on, are you with me? If each of us tells three people not to see it, and those three people each tell three people not to see it, and so on... well, we could probably get about twenty-seven people NOT to see this movie. So let's do it! Be proud! Be strong! And in recognition of my strong-willed non-Kangaroo-Jack-seeing brothers and sisters... I SALUTE YOU WITH TWENTY-SEVEN BILLY CRYSTALS: