Reckless Kelly

After the box-office bonanza that was Young Einstein (1988), Warners, who had picked up the film after its suprisingly successful initial Australian release, were keen for more of the same. The result was this monumentally inane and terminally banal milking of the Kelly legend, co-written by Serious, that recalls the piss-take spirit of the Barry MacKenzie films of the early 1970s - crude satirical swipes to the sound of popping tinnies as local yokels head "O.S." - then to England, now to America.

But what had a kind of raucous appeal back then is here nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the US market's appetite for stereotypes of Aussie larrikinism, of which Crocodile Dundee (1986) was the benchmark. Even less fortunately, the film comes across as a vanity project for the director who also starred. Not surprisingly, the film was not well-received domestically and about its only saving grace is that it offers an early example of a Hugo Weaving villain, a two-dimensional characterisation with which he has subsequently done very well in the US.

 

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