One of the oldest and most dependable of storytelling formulas is the Fish Out of Water storyline, which entails taking a character out of his natural habitat and placing him somewhere altogether different. The Fish Out of Water (or “FOW”) formula has been around for centuries, and has been a popular one for movies almost since their beginning. But the heyday for cinematic FOW comedies was the mid-to-late eighties, following the release of the 1984 blockbuster Beverly Hills Cop, one of the quintessential Fish Out of Water movies. From there, the formula caught fire in Hollywood, and studios applied it to movies of all sorts, from the fourth Star Trek movie (which placed the Enterprise crew in 20th Century San Francisco) to an Arnold Schwarzenegger family movie. But in my estimation, perhaps the purest distillation of the formula can be found in the surprise 1986 hit, “Crocodile” Dundee.
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