Crocodile Hunter:Collision Course

CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE
Take a look at THIS beauty!.

Starring Steve and Terri Irwin. Directed by John Stainton, 2002.

This may be the best example of a nature show being translated to the big screen, EVER. For those of you not familiar with the Discovery Channel cult hit, THE CROCODILE HUNTER, it follows the various adventures of the seemingly reckless Aussie Steve Irwin and his buff American wife Terri as they roam the outback, and occasionally all over the world in search of animals in peril, or simply new species to investigate. Steve particularly displays a boundless delight for his chosen profession, hurling himself into fantastically dangerous-looking encounters with some of the deadliest creatures on Earth with the kind of abandon usually reserved for those being chased by angry mobs. His constant foolhardy displays manhandling venomous snakes and, his favourite, crocs, are a constant source of entertainment to his viewers. It's hardly a surprise then, that someone decided to try and take this natural man of action and transplant him to the silver screen.

The obvious problem is: this guy's a nature show host. Sure he's got charisma (and almost inhuman enthusiasm for his work), but can he ACT?

The filmmakers bypassed this problem most ingeniously...they didn't even ASK him to act. Instead, a movie was filmed around him, into which his and his wife's regular antics were slowly added. The movie plot revolves around a data-pod of some sort, owned by the CIA that has fallen to Earth from a wrecked satellite. As chance would have it, it's landed in the Australian outback, where it was promptly swallowed up by a cranky crocodile who's busily warring with a local rancher for territory. Steve's called in by the local wildlife authoritues to capture and relocate the beast, while at the same time a pair of overeager CIA agents travel down under to capture the device for their bosses.

It takes a little while for the plotlines to intersect. For a good part of the movie we just see Steve doing his thing...tackling snakes, crocodiles, and the odd bird-eating spider with fangs like Dracula, all the while narrating his escapades into a mysterious camera we never get to see, in his ubiquitious Aussie-slang dialect (from the way he beats it to death, you'd think Australians said 'Crikey' every other word. Might not want to mention that to THEM, though. It would, as Steve puts it, make'em a little grumpy).

The mind-bending part of the movie occurs when Steve's path crosses with the CIA, or more aptly, the tv show meets the movie. Even as Steve misidentifies the agents for poachers and starts to do battle, he STILL continues to narrate his actions towards the screen (standing astride a moving jeep and squaring off against an armed enemy in mortal combat, Steve looks aside towards the audience and declares, "These guys mean BUSINESS!").

What's even odder is how everyone Steve meets recognizes him quite clearly as that guy from the Discovery Channel, which adds to the wonderfully surreal (or hyper-real, if you want) feel to the movie. The opposing segments are even filmed differently...Steve's scenes are all shot in a squared-off tv ratio, while the scenes with the actual actors are in widescreen. There's a hilarious scene at CIA HQ where, following their agents first encounter with Steve, the brains back at Langley actually manage to posit a legitimate sounding theory as to why the Irwins could, in fact, be international spies bent on beating them at their own game.

The actors in the movie are competent enough...the CIA agents themselves are a little wooden, which may be intentional, though the Australian cast are more appealing. An Angelina Jolie-esque blonde, apparently working for a splinter element of the CIA (or something) provides some not-unpleasant eye candy. But the real star is Steve Irwin, and his infectious, over the top charisma. You can't help but root for him, even when hurling himself headlong into such absurdly dangerous situations that he truly deserves to be eaten for sheer audacity. He gives this movie it's charm, and because he was mostly filmed au natural, oblivious until the premiere screening even of the movie's script, that charm is 100% genuine. And in Hollywood? That's rarer than a King Brown with pink stripes.

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