Whats wrong with Mick Crocodile Dundee? He looks old! Sure, he was no spring chicken even in the original movie 15 years earlier. But now he looks really, REALLY old. Hes not alone, though. The line of humour being exercised here outdoes him in the past it stakes at every turn.
Mick (Paul Hogan, in the role that once propelled him to worldwide fame) now makes a living out of touting his crocodile hunter reputation for the tourists. Hes still matched-up to first-film sweetheart Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski), and the pair of them now have a sprog called Mikey (Serge Cockburn honestly, who calls their kid Serge??).
When Sue gets a call from her newspaper mogul daddy telling her about the death of his Los Angeles editor, she decides to return to her journalistic roots and take the job herself. So Mick, Sue and Mikey head for L.A., where they soon learn of mischievous goings-on at a movie studio producing the third instalment of a tired film franchise (which is some sort of self-referential satire, I suppose). More importantly, it develops into an unconvincing crime sub-plot which, in the enforced absence of any sort of romantic storyline, is effectively a necessity. The fact that most of it revolves around various tourist rides and film sets turns the whole thing into a strange sort of PG remake of Beverly Hills Cop 3 (the one in the theme park).
When compared to the sparky, funny Croc film of 1986, everything here is just plain wrong. Hes a watered-down PG version of his former wild-man self. Hes followed everywhere by a pointless kid. Hes not so much a fish-out-of-water any more as just a bloke-out-of-date. And painfully so. Would Sue ever have fallen in love with him in the first place if THIS had been the guy shed encountered in the outback all those years ago? Even the music scores a bit on the rubbish side now.