WakenPayne
Okay, Skippy was probably the most well known thing to come out of Australia in the 60's and 70's. I personally never grew up with Skippy but based on what I have seen I didn't like it but when I found sitting on a shelf this movie which implies a super-kangaroo fighting gold smugglers, I had to get it and... I am extremely underwhelmed.This movie is surprisingly boring. Skippy is barely in this, I can't even begin to tell you what kind of disappointment that is! The title character known for saving the day multiple times barely does anything. It's not like we could market an animal in a children's film! No, we need the Park Rangers to be the hero that does everything. I just don't see how any child in '69 was supposed to find this entertaining.Oh and the movie drags, a LOT. The main characters don't find out about the villain's intention nor that they are villains until halfway through the movie. The rest is spent having conversations about fish!... Or permits. Maybe we should follow this movie's lead and have a children's film about filing taxes or sitting in a university lecture.Basically if the absolute almost non-existent use of the title character isn't bad enough they don't have the theme music but instead replace it with this weird song about catching fish. So let me get this straight, this is a children's film adapted from the show where the main hero does almost nothing, the conversations are boring, they change the lead character and the theme music which even decades after it was cancelled people knew was left out. I don't like the show and I'm aware the Australian film Industry was only just alive at this point but did anyone on set know how to make both an entertaining children's film (even by their standards) and an adaptation?! Okay, onto the good. There isn't many things. The cinematography is actually quite good for the time, as does the production design also considering as I said the Australian Film Industry had only just recovered after almost a decade of not making a single movie and it does burst out with the very rare laugh from it. The rest of it however, is not enjoyable in the slightest.The best way to describe it is a cash-in. Skippy was successful at the time, so it only made sense to turn it into a movie. It's just the problem with that is the movie even when comparing it to the original Skippy television series in all it's corniness this whole thing just felt like something from the show but they didn't have the budget to make it a half hour episode of a television series but when they stretched it out into a movie they realized they didn't have enough plot so they just went with it and didn't even try to put anything interesting in the 70 more minutes. Honestly, when being compared to the movie, the show looks like the Mona Lisa.
