Viewed Aug.6,2008. I was very surprised by this film. It could be stilller's most intellectual comedy. There were a lot of inside jokes/references and great cameos. The actors had good chemistry. Audience reaction at times was I seeing and hearing what i just heard or saw. Destined to be a cult classic.
Summer, 2008. Year of the Downey Junior. Tropic Thunder?s biggest selling point in its advertising campaign is Downey?s character, Kirk Lazarus, a white method actor who undergoes surgery to become a black man for the Vietnam film-within-the-film, also titled Tropic Thunder. Downey is amazing in this role. It sort of sneaks up on you, but he?s Oscar-worthy amazing here. It?s more than a blackface gag; it?s an actual role.
Tropic Thunder is fascinating in that way. It?s the smartest dumb comedy in ages. Its targets?big budget filmmaking, the churning, grinding show biz machine and its effects on the personal identities of those within the machine?are rich and its aim is spot-on. It?s high-concept comedy, the type that goes over great in a Hollywood pitch session. ?What if a bunch of actors with conflicting personalities, all sharing the lead roles in a war movie, are accidentally left stranded in a war zone?? But beyond that pitch, there?s substance here, and pointed satire. And, on the surface of that, there?s dozens of vulgar gross-out gags and jokes about the metally handicapped (make that hilarious jokes about the portrayal of the mentally handicapped). It?s a film with a lot of layers.
Co-written and directed by Ben Stiller, who also appears as waning action star Speedman alongside Downey and Jack Black as coked-out comedian Jeff Portnoy. Jay Baruchel and Bradon T. Jackson round out the main cast, with Baruchel as a young actor in his first big role and Jackson as rapper-turned-actor and Booty Sweat energy drink spokesman Alpa Chino. Both are great alongside comedy veterans like Stiller and Black, but the best supporting cast members are the two unadvertised mega-stars that Tropic Thunder uses as secret weapons.
I won?t tell you who they are here, but with a little research you?ll be able to find them if you absolutely must know. One of the roles is a massive step forward in career damage control for the particular actor in the part. He throws aside his public image with gusto, to take on the part of a balding, overweight, foul-mouthed movie exec with a heart of ice. He?s Tropic Thunder?s main villain; a bastard who has all of the power to save his actors that are lost in the jungle, but refuses to do so due to bottom line costs. The other actor that I mentioned isn?t given as showy of a part, but still manages to move away from his image by simply appearing in a film like Tropic Thunder, taking a break from his never-ending stream of mediocre romantic comedies to hang out with the real guys. It?s a welcome change for the both of them, and their scenes together are mind-blowingly bizarre.
This brings me back to those themes of identity. Not only are they written into the script itself, but they are there in the mere casting of two supporting characters. This kind of thought really makes Tropic Thunder into something special. It?s more complex than I expected, but its complexity is sort of sneaky and easily overlooked during all the funny quips and explosions. This is the kind of multi-layered comedy where some people will only get the obvious laughs, while others will find amusement on the almost ?meta? side of the film?the part of the movie that deals with what it means to be a celebrity.
I don?t know that I had any full-on belly laughs during the film, but I grinned the entire time at the audacity of the thing. It?s a movie with guts (literally and figuratively), an action movie disguised as a comedy disguised as a mediation on the cult of personality. It?s very entertaining, and makes me love this Summer?s crop of blockbusters that much more. I wish every Summer could be 2008.
This Movie Is Going To Suck Bad! Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Robert Downey Jr Just Wasted Thier Great Talents In Such A Stupid Movie! Here Go Agian...in Dumb and Stupid Movie Land.
Tropic Thunder is a film I've anticipated (from it's trailers/ Downey Jr's "Blackface" controversy) for quite awhile, but knowing Ben Stiller's hit (Reality Bites) or miss (Zoolander) directing filmography, I kept my expectations relatively lukewarm. Luckily that wasn't necessary because it's Stiller's best effort as a director to date aswell as one of the best comedies of the year.
Starting with the best fake-trailers this side of Grindhouse, TROPIC THUNDER develops into the most uniquely wacky blend of satire/action/ and gross-out I've ever seen. At first it appears to be a straight-up spoof on popular war films, then it becomes a film within a film, then an attack on Hollywood and the film industry in general. Also present are some rather shocking (and hilarious) sight gags (exploding film-crew members, the brutal slaughter of an endangered species) that managed to catch everyone off gaurd.
The main reason TROPIC THUNDER works so well though is it's stellar ensemble cast. You have the likes of Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, Steve Coogan, and Nick Nolte all turning in terrific comedic performances that they obviously had fun with. Tom Cruise gives the extended cameo of the year as a studio executive, while Tobey Maguire and a slew of other actors make notable appearences. Ultimately it is Downey Jr. who steals almost every scene as the platoon's very white, African-American squad leader.
Rude, witty, and ballsy, TROPIC THUNDER is a great time at the movies. It's hard finding worth-while large budget comedies these days, but DIRECTOR Ben Stiller, supported by a strong cast and a great premise, has proved himself to be the right man for the task. 8/10
Hilarious, The Cameos in this movie are great T.C. was really funny! And Damn do I want A TIVO now! Every character was funny Downey Jr. was so funny, and Jack Black too! I loved the fake trailers befor the movies for the main three actors.
Stupidity seems to have a complex place in this world.... Doing this to yourself ... ...for seeing this in the theaters...Seems to be more funny!! LOL! La8r! Fascade.
This was the one movie of the summer that I really did not know what to expect. I was worried that the hype was going to be to much and the movie just wouldnt be funny. But in the end I totally had a blast with it. Every time Downey opened his mouth I laughed. That character is absurd. Jack Black's character was huge surprise. I had no idea I was getting what I got. Ben Stiller is a great comedic director and he really went all out to make it feel like it was an action film. Of course the humor was campy at times, but everything was so good that I just really got into it.
I went to an nielson-rating preview to see this. It was pretty good. I think the target age range is 30s. There was too much fake gore going on for me, but I have a feeling they will cut some of that out. Ben Stiller does his typical comedy roll, but Robert Downey and Jack Black did a great job. It's not rated yet, but it should have an R for all the foul language, it would be nice if they cut some of that out. I think the audience really liked it.
I think there were some areas they could have done better. There is a child in the film and I think that was an odd role for them to cast. I liked the two additional side-kick characters of Brandon T. Jackson and Jay Baruchel. There were several other actors in the movie that I was surprised to see and even though I'm not a big fan of Tom Cruise, I liked him in this film. They did a great make over on Tom and at the end he had a little dance routine that had us cracking up.
Could be the runaway best comedy of the summer. Glad to hear it's gunning for the R rating and it's similar in tone to the criminally underrated 'Ben Stiller Show.' I love Hollywood parodies and most involved in the cast/crew, so it's sitting pretty high on my list.
I watched the trailer and didn't think it was funny. And that annoying fucking video that plays every time I log onto Flixster is just making me hate it more and more. Oh, and Ben Stiller. HYPER-FAIL.
Fresh from seeing a screening of this at Showest in Vegas. I am not a fan of Stiller but he was nice enough to take some time out of his busy schedule at ShoWest to be at a series of California test screenings, to sit down with a group of film screener s from online websites to talk about the movie and other upcoming projects including the sequel Night at the Museum: Escape From the Smithsonian. Wow not looking forward to that sequel.
Jack Black steals this film and this should make up for the couple of low end films you saw him this winter.
All the actors basically play them selfs in a movie with in a movie Shakespearean theme. The actors become the real soldiers fighting in war they fall into while making a movie. This is a more complex version of Three Amigos with Steve Martin. Downy also in this cast, has also done a film similar to Tropic Thunder, were he plays an actor playing an detective that becomes involved in a real case. Tom Cruise makes a brief walk threw.
At the panel discussion Stiller saz he came up with the idea like twenty years ago when he was doing "Empire of the Sun" in 1987 because at that time, that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and his friends and him were going on auditions for Vietnam movies and going away to fake boot camps. It seemed like there was a time when all actors were going away to fake boot camp and talking about these incredible experiences that they had and how it really changed their lives and there was something there that seemed funny to him "Oh, wow. You're going off and getting all of that. What about people who actually go to war?" The actors were like owning this experience as if it was like this real and incredible experience. I'm sure that it was a great experience, but it wasn't like actually going to real boot camp. " so with that in mind we wrote this script.
At a press conference before accepting the ShoWest Male Star of the Year, Downey Jr. talked about his character and explained exactly what he did that was so outrageous: "In 'Tropic Thunder' I play a guy named Kirk Lazarus, who I fashioned after Russell Crowe, Daniel Day-Lewis with a little Colin Farrell in there, those three guys or one guy are playing an African-American army sergeant in a very important Vietnam movie. The movie is such a complex plotline in itself than I think to talk about the mockumentary of your complex storyline might be more confusing than anyone can bear. In the mockumentary, as Kirk Lazarus is preparing, he went back and actually moved in with the man that the character he's playing, who would be a 75-year-old African-American, he went in and moved in with his wife in Vietnam, so there are scenes where I'm with my Vietnamese family that's not my family and I decided that I should start taking the psych meds of the character that I'm playing, this African-American Army sergeant, from when he was at the hospital so I could understand his experience more, and at one point in the documentary, I explain clearly how I built the pyramids."
Owen Wilson was tied to this film at one time but have moved on.
Lets see if you move on after seeing this film later this year. It was a hit at ShoWest.
Er, what? Is the trailer supposed to make this look quite so fucking awful? I don't even have a morbid curiosity to find out what this is about. And why am I currently forced to hear this trailer start up every time I'm on the Flixster home page? I can't get to the pause button fast enough and am beginning to get a stomach ulcer from the thought of any further kind of promotional guff.
MCT:August 6, 2008
MCT:August 5, 2008
MCT:August 1, 2008
MCT:July 21, 2008
MCT:June 1, 2008
