The R-rated Christopher Walken movie the studio turned into a children’s film: “A lot of cursing, a lot of sex”
In 1998, super producer Jerry Bruckheimer was fresh off Armageddon and Enemy of the State and was prepping his next batch of hit action movies. On top of a Bad Boys sequel being kicked around, Bruckheimer explained that he wanted to make a foul-mouthed, down-and-dirty mob comedy. Over the next five years, that R-rated comedy picked up a starry cast, including everyone’s favourite scarily eccentric icon, Christopher Walken, and was shot in Australia. It was then summarily rejected by test audiences and completely retooled as a CGI-heavy children’s film, which still managed to upset parents all over the country, as a few of the movie’s more risqué gags still remained in the genuinely bizarre final cut.
The tale of the movie, initially known as Down and Under, began as a conversation between two screenwriters in a local watering hole. Steve Bing, the founder of Shangri-La Entertainment and co-writer of Chuck Norris’ Missing in Action II: The Beginning – yes, really – was having a drink with Scott Rosenberg, the writer of Con Air. Bing began regaling Rosenberg with a tale of two screw-ups dispatched by the mob to Australia to deliver money to a nefarious customer. As they drive through the Outback, they accidentally hit a kangaroo, who then absconds with their money. A crazy adventure ensues as they desperately try to get the ill-gotten gains back from the pesky animal.
Bing imagined the movie as a Midnight Run-style action comedy with plenty of profanity, sex, and absurd situations. Bruckheimer, for one, loved the idea, telling the LA Times, “It was interesting, clever, and I hadn’t seen a film with a kangaroo in years.”
By 2001, the movie was shooting, with Jerry O’Connell and Anthony Anderson as the leads, Coyote Ugly’s David McNally in the director’s chair, and Walken and Michael Shannon lending intimidating support. To Bruckheimer’s horror, though, when he saw the first assembly cut, it was painfully obvious that McNally’s mechanical kangaroo looked awful. He was expecting the first test screening to be a disaster, but to his surprise, the younger members of the audience loved the dodgy kangaroo.
O’Connell was gutted at the test screening results, later telling Vice, “I thought, ‘What a bummer, this was supposed to be my big Bruckheimer-starring film. Story of my life. Back to the drawing board. I guess the fat kid from Stand by Me will have to figure out another way to make it.'”
To his shock, though, he soon got a call from someone at the studio who told him, “I guess they’re gonna make this into a kids’ movie and really heavily animate the kangaroo.”
Bruckheimer made a last-ditch effort to save the film, drawing inspiration from Disney’s hit Snow Dogs. The advertising campaign for that Cuba Gooding Jr vehicle cleverly made it seem like the cute huskies in the movie could talk, even though they only spoke in one brief scene. If Disney could convince audiences they were in for a talking dog picture, why couldn’t he do the same with Down and Under, turning it into a talking kangaroo movie? And so, he did just that. Proudly admitting to the pivot, Bruckheimer said, “We did a dream sequence where he raps, we changed the title to Kangaroo Jack, and we made it much more kid-friendly all around.”
Amazingly, Warner Brothers respected Bruckheimer’s commercial instincts so much that the studio willingly paid an extra $10million to animate the kangaroo. When this version was tested, Bruckheimer claimed, “It went through the roof. It was the biggest change in test screening numbers in Warner’s history.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, this wild overcompensation didn’t jive with the opinion of critics, who lambasted the film, and audiences, who accused it of being a flagrant example of false advertising. One mom who took her seven-year-old to the movie complained, “I was really upset by the violence and sexual innuendo.”
Yes, that’s right – somehow, despite all the changes that were made to the film, a few adult jokes and situations remained. As O’Connell put it, the dark spec script with “a lot of cursing, a lot of sex” that had been retrofitted into a zany caper about a rapping kangaroo had still left in a significant amount of lewd humour. Stunningly, it also featured a scene in which a villain takes a knife to O’Connell’s throat and threatens, “I’m going to carve you up piece by piece”.
As for Walken, what did he make of signing up for an R-rated comedy only to be associated with a talking animal fiasco? “Everybody loves kangaroos,” he told IGN. “No, people say that to me a lot.”
