When W. K. Dickson (working with Thomas Edison) in 1893 first exhibited the Kinetoscope to the public, allowing them to experience the wonder of a moving image shown inside a box, he could hardly have imagined that in little more than 107 years the primitive (and seemingly useless) technology would hit its peak with a film about knockabout Australian larrikin Crocodile Dundee.

Continuing the story started by Crocodile Dundee in 1986, and followed by Crocodile Dundee II in 1988, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles sees the (hopefully final) return of Paul Hogan to our screens. Although the series started out with a tidal wave of national support for our "local boy done good" and went on to international success, this instalment sees the series sink to a pitiful low.

Not that it had too far to fall, really. I can honestly say that I didn't get more than one laugh out of it. In fact, it wasn't even a laugh. It was more of a "Huh". That's a pretty sad result for any comedy, no matter how broad your tastes and sense of humour.

The plot, or what tries miserably to pass for one, sees Croc go to Los Angeles with his family and accidently uncover a plot by a film studio to steal valuable works of art. The plot, acting and humour all fail horribly in padding out Hoges' little observations about Americans and will probably have you bored to death well within 20 minutes.

However, as you'll learn, even if the film itself is an utter dud, the transfer is the complete opposite, and goes some way to make it up to W. K. Dickson and his Kinetoscope for this sorry excuse for entertainment.

What depresses me is that for such a shocker of a film, the quality of the picture is so damned good. The sad fact is that they've done practically everything right in the transfer of this film to DVD. Frankly, to find issue with this would be a waste of time and is better left for the more anal nitpickers amongst us. It's bright, vibrant, clean, clear and detailed. There's the tiniest hint of aliasing from time to time, and the rare soft shot, but aside from this, it's everything that a recently released film brought to DVD should be. The 1.85:1 16x9 picture appears to do everything right, and is very easy on the eyes, getting a deserved high score.

The same pretty much goes for the audio work, but with one minor complaint. First, a thumbs-up for the use of a 448kbps mix. This should be the norm on all DD5.1 DVDs, but sadly isn't in anywhere near enough cases. The sound is bright, perhaps too bright at times, I might say. The dialogue in a few scenes very clearly exposes the ADR work and sounds totally artificial. While this generally works in its favour most of the time by keeping the dialogue crystal clear, it does often sound a tad too fake for my liking. Throw in some good use of the surround channels which contain a fair bit of environmental noise to help place you in the picture, and you have 90 minutes of justification for why you spent so much money on your gear.

Extras? Puhleese.... This is one case where I'm glad all we have is a bare bones rental disc. I don't really care to learn anything about how or why this film was made. It simply wasn't worth the effort.

In the end though, even a great transfer can't make up for this pathetic attempt to generate some extra retirement money for Hoges. Sorry to say it, but if you like this film, you need your head read. But on the plus side, at least you can tell your analyst that the DVD looks and sounds pretty damn fine.