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Review: Tropic Thunder

So, after three weeks of it being the number one movie in America, I finally got around to see Tropic Thunder. I can’t say that it was “built up” for me. It wasn’t, in fact of the people I knew who saw it they said simply, it’s funny.

And it is funny. In fact the way the movie starts with it’s pseudo-commercials/fake movie trailers are priceless. People in the theatre didn’t know what was going on. It was quite hilarious. So was the beginning part of the film within the film also called Tropic Thunder.

So lets go with the positive. Robert Downey Jr. owns the movie. Owns it. You can see the movie just for him and be satisfied. I’m so happy to see his return to glory this year. He deserves it. And his fake trailer with its amazing cameo is priceless. Simply priceless.

Also Jay Baruchel aka Steven Karp from Undeclared is great. He doesn’t have much to do here, but he’s great. I love me some Steven Karp. I’m really hoping him and Seth Rogen do that post-apocalyptic movie that showed up as a short on Youtube a few months ago, Jay & Seth vs The Apocalypse. I’m sold for that, especially after all the post-apocalyptic movies that have been coming out of late.



Also someone whose every line made me smile was Danny McBride. This is his break out year (I had only previously known him as Bustass in David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls) with this, coupled with Pineapple Express, he’s in the two big comedy blockbusters of the summer. And he kills.

Unfortunately, the movie has problems. The narrative seems like a dead weight hanging around the movies neck, and the things that move it into place are boring. Its surprisingly graphically violent. More so then I expected, but that’s not a major problem. The problem is that some jokes fall dead. There are points in the film when I know that I’m supposed to laugh but I wasn’t and that shouldn’t be. Yes, comedy is hit and miss, but true classics don’t have that sound of crickets I found myself going through too many times. Now granted, there are equal killer moments, but in the end it just seems like a wash. The film is absurd to the extreme, which I’m fine with if it garners greater laughs. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. There were many times I felt myself saying, “no they didn’t” even though it was telegraphed it was going to happen. And I’m not part of the Jack Black hating crew, but he rubbed me the wrong way in this film, and his storyline was contrived. Though he did have one of the greatest lines of the film.

When all is said and done, Tropic Thunder really is like Downey's line above. Its a dumb Hollywood blockbuster pretending to be a comedy satire of big Hollywood blockbuster war flicks that's really just that, a big summer blockbuster.

Overall, both Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, the summer’s two blockbuster’s failed me. Good for a laugh, but I won’t see them again anytime soon. Well maybe Pineapple (which I enjoyed more). That’s such a DVD movie.