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| Monday, December 1st
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| Movie Forums :: User Reviews :: Tropic Thunder |
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Posted on 7/29/08
Tropic Thunder
NOTE: this review was originally posted on our movie forums. Click here to see it in its original context: Tropic Thunder.
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| Rating... |
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The trailer is funny, and it's a decent concept.
TROPIC THUNDER
Unfortunately the resulting movie is pretty damn pedestrian. There are laughs throughout and a couple huge guffaws - one involving Steve Coogan's character at the landing zone, the other the little would-be adoptive boy on the bridge. But overall...disappointing. I like Jack Black a lot and Stiller can be good, but neither do anything different to add to their resume, falling back on stuff they do in their sleep. Downey Jr. is funny as the Russell Crowe-ish Australian Method actor who will go to great lengths to submerge himself into a film role and Robert definitely commits to the silliness of his role, but the script gives him precious little to do beyond what you've seen in the trailer. It's funny, but it's thin. Which sums up Tropic Thunder perfectly.
The best parts of the entire film are the mock trailers and commercial that open the film and introduce you to the four main characters. But the script isn't as inspired as the basic idea. The celebrity cameos from the likes of Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Love Hewitt are fleetingly amusing, but they are mostly crammed into the first few and last few minutes. Nick Nolte is fine as the crusty Vet, but frankly the twist for his character is unnecessary and adds nothing, so he's wasted. I'm almost shocked to be typing this, but Matthew McConaughey as a Hollywood agent has some of the film's consistently best little moments. They aren't great, but they become a welcome respite from the increasingly dull and predictable jungle action of the main plot. Maybe even more surprisingly than McConaughey, Tom Cruise is quite funny as a puckish megalomaniacal media mogul. But after a while the novelty of Cruise in the make-up wears off and I started to wonder what somebody like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Christopher Guest could have added to the part with inspiration and improvisation. Even so, his foul-mouthed hothead is funny, but the strength comes in that he has a few scenes scattered throughout and the whole thing isn't about him. Of the five "actors" in the jungle, Jay Baruchel ("Undeclared", Million Dollar Baby) is the straight man but comes off better than Jack and Ben going through their over-worn schtick. The digs at the business like Downey's character explaining why going "full retard" for a performance failed to bring home Oscar gold are funny, but not so much laugh-out-loud funny. Thrown into the middle of this warmed-over plot that really loses momentum completely when they get to the camp, it simply doesn't add up to anything special.
All in all, it's just too thin. It would have made a decent ten-minute sketch on the short-lived and often hysterical "Ben Stiller Show" (1990), but they never flesh it out to a worthy feature. I can recommend it, mildly, but given the potential you have to severely lower your expectations and enjoy the spotty laughs instead of pining for the comic masterpiece you may have been hoping for.
GRADE: C+
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